Mario Garcia Torres
dal 19/9/2007 al 17/11/2007
Segnalato da
19/9/2007
Mario Garcia Torres
Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
A Solo Exhibition. July 2007 is a projection of a white square marked by infinitesimal traces, which is the result of a blank film kept in the artist's pocket for a month. Somehow these works almost produced themselves, with time and inaction, and some sort of twisted take on no-intention. The experience was repeated next month. The new scratches that appeared became the next month work.
A Solo Exhibition
When I met Oscar Neuestern for the first time, I understood that things that go undiscussed are in some ways equivalent to those that are talked about. It was sometime during 1968. I started visiting Neuestern because I was interested at the time in the study of intentionality. A year later, I wrote the only text that exists today on Oscar Neustern's work. The article published in ARTNews inspired Mario Garcia Torres. I was glad to be invited to write the press release for his show.
From Oscar Neuestern to The Transparencies on the Non-Act
The series of slides, The Transparencies on the Non-Act, perfectly reveal Oscar Neuestern's obsession for the void. Others at the time would carefully move toward the dematerialisation of the work of art, whereas Neuestern was a step ahead; he had built his entire artistic career on absence. He would have been surprised to discover that his work became an inspiration for other artists and that void and removal could also leave traces.
Robert Rauschenberg and Wilhelm de Kooning ; An Undiscoled Month in 1953
I don't think that Oscar Neuestern knew about An Undiscoled Month in 1953, the recording in which Rauschenberg erases de Kooning drawing. I didn't either know it at that time. Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) is just a white page scattered by a few traces of pencils and ink. At the time, Rauschenberg was trying to make drawings without images and in 1953 he finally found the way to simultaneously unmake and create. It took him one month.
Mario Garcia Torres : July 2007 and August 2007 in Paris
July 2007 is a projection of a white square marked by infinitesimal traces, which is the result of a blank film kept in the artist's pocket for a month. Somehow these works almost produced themselves, with time and inaction, and some sort of twisted take on no-intention. The experience was repeated next month. The new scratches that appeared became the next month work.
From 'The man who never forgets dates in film' to Monochronic Film on a Polychronic film
'The man who never forgets dates in film' is the only person I know who can remember all dates in films he has seen. Mario Garcia Torres used him as a starting point for his work Monochronic Film on a Polychronic Story, which are dates scrolling on a black image, as if On Kawara had joined all his Date Paintings. This cinematographic chronology proposes a real or fictitious story, depending on your side, which started on December 5th 1971, when Amadeus Mozart died and will end on December 14th 2016, the end of the world according to a psychic featured in the film Ghostbusters 2.
I imagine Oscar Neuestern would have liked the transparency that prevails in the exhibition; he would have probably talked about visual silence. In 1968, he taught me that things that go undiscussed are in some ways equivalent to those that are talked about.
Kiki Kundry
*For this occasion, a publication 'Date due' will be published with texts by Steve Rushton, Raimundas Malasauskas and Mario Garcia Torres.
(64 pages, edited by Kadist Art Foundation and published by Revolver.)
Opening: Thursday 20th 2007
Kadist Art Foundation
19 bis - 21 rue des Trois Freres - Paris
Free admission