FEATURED ARTIST: ektor garcia
ektor garcia’s work synthesizes an interest in queer culture and arts and crafts traditions with strong roots in Mexico. Although he is ostensibly a sculptor, his works tend to be so elaborately installed and involuted that it is hard to say where things end or begin. Evocative of a homemade altar, collection of ritual or fetish objects, garcia’s environments feature artifacts fashioned from an amalgam of techniques including leather making, ceramics, sewing, welding, embroidery, and collecting. The objects themselves are known to range from handmade ceramic cups to leather cock rings, to dog muzzles, which are often combined with recycled and appropriated materials to engender hybrid forms resisting classification. When not appropriated, everything is crafted by the artist, who makes a point of learning each and every technique he uses, however imperfectly.
ektor garcia (b. 1985, Red Bluff, California), lives and works in New York. A child of migrant farm workers, he has lived and traveled frequently between California and Mexico. Garcia received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies in 2014 and received his MFA from Columbia University in 2016. Recent exhibitions in 2016 include Matthew K. Abonnenc and ektor garcia at Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY; “Contemporary Ceramics” at LeRoy Neiman Gallery curated by JJ Peet, New York, NY; “Touching The Membrane” at Space Create, Newburgh, NY; and in 2015 a two person show at the Can Gallery, a project by Lia Gangitano, New York, NY. He will be participating in the New Museum's upcoming group show “Trigger,” as well as a solo show at Visitor Welcome Center in Los Angeles this fall, and a solo show at Mary Mary in Glasgow in 2018.
ektor garcia, installation view of kriziz, kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mexico. Photo: Abigail Enzaldo.
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