Mario García Torres
Born in 1975 in Monclova, Mario García Torres is an artist currently living in Mexico City. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. In his work, García Torres explores the potential of a diverse range of media including photography, film and 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.
Avenida Mazatlan, Febrero 28, 2017 (n.d.) is a decollage made of posters originally pasted on the work’s title street. Once recovered they were then stripped off by Mario García Torres in order to reveal the advertising for a solo exhibition by artist Ulises Carrión (1941, México - 1989, The Netherlands), held at Museo Jumex, in Mexico City. As documented by the strong tearing gestures, the artist peeled off the overlaid affiches from movies and theatre shows covering the exhibition’s bill, with the intention of recuperating visibility for the Carrión’s retrospective. Once an overlooked figure, Ulises Carrión is today considered to be "Mexico’s most important conceptual artist.” His interest in new forms of art and innovative operations demonstrates his engagement with most of the artistic fields post-1960s, making him a very important reference for García Torres’ practice. Starting his career as a writer, he went on to organize events, curate exhibitions, and open an artist bookshop. Carrión invested greatly in the recirculation of ideas through mass-communication channels, questioning established systems like the postal service, as well as investigating more unpredictable strategies like rumor and human networks. Garcia Torres had previously employed the nouveau réalism technique used here in order to “unearth a specific art institution’s history through its advertisings,” but in this variation of the series, García Torres places urgency on keeping Carrion´s exhibition, Dear Reader. Don’t Read (Querido Lector, No Lea), visible.
His recent solo exhibitions include The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2018) co-organized with WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2019); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2015); the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2014); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2013); the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010); and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2007). He has also, participated in numerous international exhibitions including Manifesta 11 (2016); the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014); dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012); São Paulo Biennial (2010); Taipei Biennial (2010); Yokohama Triennale (2008); and Venice Biennale (2007).
