Mario Garcia Torres
21 Nov - 12 Dec 2009
MARIO GARCIA TORRES
Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition in Japan of Los Angeles based artist Mario Garcia Torres.
Born in 1975 in Monclova, Mexico, Garcia Torres graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. A selection of recent solo exhibitions includes venues such as CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009), University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2009), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2009), Kunsthalle Zurich (2008), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007), Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (where he was an artist in residence, 2007). Garcia Torres also participated in the Yokohama Triennale 2008, 52 Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2007), "Escultura Social", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), "Learn to Read" and "Saturday Live Actions & Interruptions", Tate Modern, London (2007) and "Elephant Cemetery", Artist's Space, New York (2007). He was the recipient of the Cartier Award at the Frieze Art Fair (2007).
“My work is concerned with reconsidering historical processes, many of them related to past art practice, with the intention of referring to current social and political problems”.
[From “ESCULTURA SOCIAL A NEW GENERATION OF ART FROM MEXICO CITY”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Yale University Press, 2007 ]
Garcia Torres explores the potential of a diverse range of media including but not limited to photography, performance and printed intervention in order for it to serve as a tool in his own re-examination of concerns related to history and conceptual art practice. Exploiting the seemingly objective informational aesthetic of conceptual presentation, Garcia Torres unearths and employs gaps in memory and understanding to address concerns of an immediate relevance.
Some of Garcia Torres’s representative works include “I Promise Every Time” shown at Agnes Hotel Art Fair, Tokyo (2007). This is the first work shown by the artist in Japan. It is a story of an artist that makes a promise every time he is in a hotel room. The story is told through a song and the papers on which he wrote the song lyrics.
In “Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi (He might as well have promised it)”, 2009 recently exhibited at Jeu de Paume, through a slide-show of Garcia Torres’s photos taken during his stay in Tokyo and in the sub-titling lab, the artist wishes to reveal narrative embedded within images; for example, the implications of translating someone else’s work.
Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition in Japan of Los Angeles based artist Mario Garcia Torres.
Born in 1975 in Monclova, Mexico, Garcia Torres graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. A selection of recent solo exhibitions includes venues such as CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009), University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2009), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2009), Kunsthalle Zurich (2008), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007), Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (where he was an artist in residence, 2007). Garcia Torres also participated in the Yokohama Triennale 2008, 52 Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2007), "Escultura Social", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), "Learn to Read" and "Saturday Live Actions & Interruptions", Tate Modern, London (2007) and "Elephant Cemetery", Artist's Space, New York (2007). He was the recipient of the Cartier Award at the Frieze Art Fair (2007).
“My work is concerned with reconsidering historical processes, many of them related to past art practice, with the intention of referring to current social and political problems”.
[From “ESCULTURA SOCIAL A NEW GENERATION OF ART FROM MEXICO CITY”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Yale University Press, 2007 ]
Garcia Torres explores the potential of a diverse range of media including but not limited to photography, performance and printed intervention in order for it to serve as a tool in his own re-examination of concerns related to history and conceptual art practice. Exploiting the seemingly objective informational aesthetic of conceptual presentation, Garcia Torres unearths and employs gaps in memory and understanding to address concerns of an immediate relevance.
Some of Garcia Torres’s representative works include “I Promise Every Time” shown at Agnes Hotel Art Fair, Tokyo (2007). This is the first work shown by the artist in Japan. It is a story of an artist that makes a promise every time he is in a hotel room. The story is told through a song and the papers on which he wrote the song lyrics.
In “Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi (He might as well have promised it)”, 2009 recently exhibited at Jeu de Paume, through a slide-show of Garcia Torres’s photos taken during his stay in Tokyo and in the sub-titling lab, the artist wishes to reveal narrative embedded within images; for example, the implications of translating someone else’s work.