Jun Martínez: London-Based Puerto Rican Painter on Memory, Landscape, and Frieze London

Key facts

• Jun Martínez was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, in 1992 and has lived in London for approximately three years.
• His first solo exhibition with Cecilia Brunson Projects, At the centre there is a stillness, was presented in mid-2026.
• He will participate in Frieze London with Cecilia Brunson Projects, showing a pentaptych titled Sobre tierras alteradas y pastizales abandonados (Roble Blanco del Caribe) I-III.
• The pentaptych is oil on linen, each panel 180 x 120 cm, total 180 x 600 cm, and will be exhibited at The Regent's Park, London, from 14 to 18 October 2026.
• The work centers on the white oak (Tabebuia heterophylla), a Puerto Rican tree known for its pink and white blossoms and reforestation capacity.
• Martínez is preparing an institutional project in the Dominican Republic with curator Sarah Hermann.
• He describes his painting as inhabiting tensions between beauty and violence, praise and lament, celebration and protest.
• His recent research focuses on native Caribbean vegetation and naturalized species, integrating science, history, art history, literature, theology, and ecology.