“If we made equivalent to twenty-four hours all the time that has elapsed since the beginnings of planet Earth, Puerto Rico would emerge in its current form fifteen seconds before midnight.”

- Fernando Picó, historia general de puerto rico

"Quince segundos antes de la medianoche” is a vision of the Flamboyán tree and flower (Delonix regia) in it's yellow (flavida) variation. The Flamboyán is known as "the tree that refused its flowers to May” (it blooms in June and July) and is easily identified by the intense color of its five-petal flowers, which leave a welcoming rug on the floor when they fall, as well as by its broad shade. Its structure makes it resistant to climate events such as storms and hurricanes. This naturalized plant (originally from Madagascar) has become one of the main characters of the Puerto Rican landscape imagination and is found in many popular and folklore arts forms.

In this painting, the Flamboyán becomes a cosmic presence in which the land, its origins, its history, and its people's contemporary life and struggles are all together dancing in a spiral motion of colors, forms, and textures.

I paint places of encounter for ecological, historical, and poetic reflections that transcend the specificity of the original location, creating sensorial, conceptual, and emotional bridges of experience. Approaching the subjects from an immersive perspective, the paintings embody a sense of solidarity and a commitment to liberation. Coming from a land that, like many others, is continually threatened and exploited by political and economic structures, I insist on painting as an act of reaffirmation while holding the tensions between beauty and violence, praise and lament, celebration and protest.

JOSé jun martÍNEZ, 2024

José Jun Martínez (Bayamón, 1992) is a London-based visual artist from Puerto Rico. He received his BA in Humanities and Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras in 2015, and is soon to complete an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. His practice spans a decade of observing and interpreting the natural landscape, translating his perceptions into a language of painting materiality.