SculptureCenter Unveils New Solo Show by Ektor Garcia
The SculptureCenter in New York recently unveiled cadena perpetu, a new solo show by sculptor Ektor Garcia. This selection of works creatively weave copper wire and other reclaimed copper pieces into a larger visual narrative heavily influenced by the artist’s personal trajectory and Mexcian culture.
Ektor Garcia, figura, 2019. Steel, latex, copper.Photograph courtesy of the Ektor Garcia.
Curated by Kyle Dancewicz, Director of Exhibitions and Programs, the show uses copper wires as a means to connect objects like fasteners, loops, and knots, so the larger piece simulates lengths of rope and chain. Garcia’s clay, metal, and leather elements conjoin loosely across many works and travel between studio and gallery spaces in changing configurations: one exhibition, clipped off with wire cutters, is tacked to another.
One link in a chain, broken off, is reattached with copper wire. As such, the dimensions of garcia’s works are found both here and elsewhere. The disorienting sum of many visible connections invites disassociation from any one symbolic register in his materials.
Garcia’s work is influenced by rural handcraft and gendered family traditions from Tabasco in Zacatecas, Mexico, while his own itinerant lifestyle necessarily drags the detritus of many places into his practice. Social and cultural associations of these techniques, materials, and objects are reimagined through the artist’s trajectory.
Born in Red Bluff, California, Garcia lives and works between Mexico City and New York. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and an MFA from Columbia University, New York in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include Cooper Cole, Toronto (2019); Mary Mary, Glasgow (2018); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2018); Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles (2017); and kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2016). Group exhibitions include LAXART, Los Angeles (2018); New Museum, New York (2017); Chicken Coop Contemporary, Portland, Oregon (2018); Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara (2018); and ACCA, Melbourne (2018).Also in this Issue:
- Somersault Letterpress: Continuing the Legacy of Handcrafted Copper Letterpressing
- Transforming Copper Wires into Powerful Visual Statements
- HBS Copper: Continuing the Legacy of Handcrafted Copper Stills
- The Copper Art of Retablos
- SculptureCenter Unveils New Solo Show by Ektor Garcia