6 ½ Wochen – ektor garcia

The Museum Folkwang is showing Mexican-American artist ektor garcia’s (born 1985 in Red Bluff, California) first solo exhibition in Germany, as part of its 6 ½ Weeks series. Many of the works being presented – some of which were produced on site – incorporate traditional, mostly Mexican artisanry techniques. garcia investigates how objects, materials and techniques influence cultural practices, as well as images of gender-specific and societal roles.

ektor garcia borders a verdigris-tinged copper plate with lace, he adorns an abstracted male figure made of dark iron with a fine copper thread, places a coiling greenish form on a crocheted cloth. In a continual process, garcia shapes leather, ceramic, yarn and copper, creating installational works full of palpable contradictions and contrasts. While on the one hand he submits to materials, explains garcia, he also tries to dominate them. His personal and universal worlds are produced literally through manual labour. Impressions of domestic intimacy, sometimes also of naivety and kitsch, mingle in garcia’s work with references to sexuality and to queer leather subculture.

In his works, garcia combines props and fragments to form his own cosmos replete with references. Though his installations are always snapshots of his continually evolving body of work.

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