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Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art. For him, this is a way of rethinking the tradition in a more personal way, to have a grip on events of recent history and examine them with a curiosity, both critical and sensual. The artist emphasizes the fact that new ideas and meanings may arise from these archaeological narratives. Until it Makes Sense seems to say that faced with the confrontation of heterogeneous elements, coherence can only emerge with the passage of time. It suggests yet that sensitive and personal observation, after all, is a valid form of interpretation of history. Mario Garcia Torres makes his work from already written stories, whether real or fictitious. He creates new narratives based on documents and works of “mythical” artists such as Robert Barry, John Baldessari, or lesser known artists such as Allen Smithee or Oscar Neuestern.
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.
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...