The transcription of a lecture by Elisabeth Wetterwald on a video installation by conceptual Mexican artist, with a series of slideshow stills.
All of Mario García Torres' work entails moving back and forth between past and present. The artist's interest lies with unfinished works or projects, little-known events or anecdotes, stories that have not gone down in history, facts that few people can attest to today, and a few unsolved mysteries. He extends them or re-orchestrates them to bring them “up to date”; he removes them from their historical and social context in order to examine the mechanisms that help to make history, to see how it can be restyled. Tributes indeed play a part (Mario García Torres works on creations by artists that he admires) but there is also the question of implementation: what remains of these works? What can we do with them today? What new opportunities can we give them?
Elisabeth Wetterwald is a French art critic and curator.
Mario García Torres (born 1975 in Monclova,
Mexico, lives and works in Mexico City) received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. In his work he explores the potential of a diverse range of media including
photography,
film,
performance in order for it to serve as a tool in his own re-examination of concerns related to history and
conceptual art practice in which there is always a time or location displacement. In so doing, he derives a new idea from history and reality.
His solo exhibitions have included Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2016), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2015), Pérez Art Museum Miami (2014), Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2013), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010), and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2007). He has also participated in 8th Berlin Biennale (2014), dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012), São Paulo Biennial (2010), Taipei Biennial (2010), Yokohama Triennale (2008), and Venice Biennale (2007). He is the winner of the 2007 Frieze Cartier Award for emerging international artists.
