3 min
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969. This article, which is the only trace of his work, is indicative of a lack of interest by Neuestern to leave his name in history; to “defend an artistic activity that has little or no interest to last.” Oscar Neuestern could only remember the previous 24 hours, of which his life and his work are in constant erasure and reconstruction. His practice was “to let things be done with time and the unconscious,” while “not fearing the void.” He looked for the absolute through transparency and symmetry. Neuestern thought to reach this absolute through an ultimate “non-act,” in other words to create from scratch. In a form without image, the artist tells the story of this artist in a series of slides that change from white to black, while also playing with the opacity and transparency of the slides. The Transparencies of the Non-act is a silent visual work and it questions, through the history of Neuestern, artwork, creation, the role of the artist, and the building of history.
Mario García Torres is a conceptual artist who engages with various media in his practice, including film, sound, performance, ‘museographic installations’ and video. García Torres often cites untold or ‘minor’ histories, with a predilection for avant-garde art and music from the 1960s and 70s as departing points for his work. He has recreated historical exhibitions and has even ‘completed’ unfinished artworks, often blurring original and reenactment, past and present, while questioning universal ideas about truth, certainty and time – all core ideas in the development of his body of work.
Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
This work, a large oil painting on canvas, shows a moment from Amorales’s eight-minute two-channel video projection Useless Wonder (2006)...
Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...
In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...
Do ut des (2009) is part of an ongoing series of books that Castillo Deball has altered with perforations, starting from the front page and working inward, forming symmetrical patterns when each spread is opened...
Mariana Castillo Deball’s set of kill hole plates are part of a larger body of work problematizing archeological narratives, and drawing attention to the conservation process and its role in recreating an imagined object...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Carlos Amorales, based in Mexico City, works in many media and combinations thereof, including video, drawing, painting, photography, installation, animation, and performance...
War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist...
Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015...
This work, a large oil painting on canvas, shows a moment from Amorales’s eight-minute two-channel video projection Useless Wonder (2006)...
Produced on the occasion of an exhibition at ARTIUM of Alava, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, this deck of cards is a selection of images from Carlos Amorales’s Liquid Archive...