Forms of Imagining – Until it Makes Sense (Project Press)

FORMS OF IMAGINING 05.07–17.08.13 PROJECT ARTS CENTRE

Mario García Torres Episode 1: 05 July – 13 July Episode 3: 29 July – 10 Aug

Episode 2: 15 July – 27 July Episode 4: 12 Aug – 17 Aug

Curated by Tessa Giblin

Until It Makes Sense List of Works Biography

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An exhibition of work by Mario García Torres that unfolded over four episodes, Until It Makes Sense took its title from one of his works – an animation that was created in real space and time for the exhibition.

Every day these four words were re-written on a small patch of the gallery wall, simultaneously inscribing a promise and asking a question.

Each episode focused on a distinctive element of the artist’s practice, repeating and recombining artworks made by Mario García Torres during the past ten years, and staging the exhibition along a dramatic arc. Beginning with an opening sequence that introduced the sincerity of the practice through gestural forms, the episodes moved from a focus on the museum, through a grouping of works exploring the autonomy of the individual, to a quiet but meaningful finale – the artist as labourer towards meaning.

Like Until it Makes Sense, many of the artworks in the exhibition also embraced the question of self-transformation, by appearing (or reappearing) in a new form that was developed specifically for this exhibition.

Mario García Torres is an artist who is firmly planted in the historical garden of conceptual art. His body of work is varied, consisting of forensically researched artworks which root about in the evidence; myth and remains of conceptual artworks; and simple and sincere gestures that cultivate an equally complex experience of art through their suggestion, potentiality and perhaps even hope.

UNTIL IT MAKES SENSE

Until It Makes Sense

Opening Credits

Passing through a foyer to get to the exhibition is a bit like the opening credits of a series. Mario García Torres’ Sing like Baldessari is a karaoke version of John Baldessari’s rendition of Sol LeWitt’s Sentences On Conceptual Art, and was nestled into that unassuming public space of the foyer. Alongside was Time to Piece, puzzles created from images of Dublin’s most recognisable public clocks, breaking them into tiny, interlocking fragments ready to be played at a table.

Sitting, waiting to go in to the theatre, visitors may have heard I promise (a collaboration between García Torres and Mario Lopez Landa).

Mario García Torres, Sing Like Baldessari, 2004 (still). Video, colour and sound, 14'

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Mario García Torres, Time to Piece, 2011–2013, Jigsaw puzzles

Mario García Torres, Sing Like Baldessari, 2004 and Time to Piece, 2011–2013

Episode 1

The first episode introduced the practice of Mario García Torres with a neon sculpture that announced its own function, and Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign) would return in a later episode (opened). In Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi, a series of black and white images of a confined office were projected on the gallery wall, cutting from the inside of the office to the exterior crowds on the street. This (now potentially obsolete) room in Japan is where subtitles were once inserted onto film, an activity that held translation as its primary objective, and through which meaning was inevitably altered, twisted or complicated. Subtitles, the subject of the film, have been replaced by a soundtrack that implicates the images progressing in front of the viewer with a sense of drama, set against a backdrop of labour, the passage of time and sculptural transformation. Until it Makes Sense was freshly inscribed on the wall.

Mario García Torres, Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi, 2009–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, sound, 6'20"

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Mario García Torres, Until It Makes Sense, 2004–2013, Graphite on wall

Mario García Torres, Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign), 2004–2013, Neon

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Episode 2

The museum is an institution that provides much of the context for Mario García Torres’ actions, reactions and reflections. Tracing the abduction of a historical artwork as a political gesture, followed by a reunion between activist and artwork many years later, The Variable Dimensions of Art was transformed at Project Arts Centre into a large-scale print and accompanying booklet. Mirroring the spectator’s body and role in the gallery, The Variable Dimensions of Art presented both an intriguing art historical story, and also a context for the gallery – evoking history while subversively peeling back the skin of contemporary art. At the opposite end of the gallery, three movingimage works were presented sequentially across two screens. Cover Letter is the job application made by García Torres in response to Kunsthalle Bern’s open call for an Artistic Director. Rather than an application on paper, the artist sent a slide-show as his pitch for the position. A humorous approach to a feasible notion, the idea of the artist as Museum Director focuses on questions of expertise, network, and the co-opting of conceptual art concerns as curatorial practice. At the same time, the work creates a classical still life in the most recognisable medium of Mario García Torres’ practice – subtitled 35mm slide projection. While reflecting on Martin Kippenberger’s project to create the Museum of Modern Art Syros on a small Greek Island in What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, García Torres investigated the status of a historical immaterial artwork in What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides). Episode 2 also included the first presentation of Museo de Arte, Sacramento, García Torres’ immaterial museum situated on a piece of his father’s land. It was represented in the exhibition by a letter of invitation to an artist to make a work for the collection, and a piece of black carpet cut to the shape of the plot of land in question. And Until it Makes Sense was being inscribed on the wall, daily.

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Mario García Torres, Cover Letter, 2011–13 (still), 35mm slides transferred to video, 2'17"

Mario García Torres, Cover Letter, 2011–13, 35mm slides transferred to video, 2'17" and What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides), 2004–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 8'53"

Mario García Torres, What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides), 2004–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 8'53".Cover Letter, 2011–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 2'17"

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Mario García Torres, What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides) (still), 2004–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 8'53"

Mario García Torres, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger,2007–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 9'28" and What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides), 2004–2013, 35mm slides transferred to video, 8'53"

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Mario García Torres, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, 2007–2013 (still), 35mm slides transferred to video, 9'28"

Mario García Torres, The Variable Dimensions of Art, 2010–2013.

Archival pigment print onto selfadhesive wallpaper, 6m × 4m, booklet

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Mario García Torres, Museo de Arte, Sacramento, 2013–ongoing, Variable dimensions, mixed media

Episode 3

Originally produced as a performance in the style of a lecture, I Am Not a Flopper… shifted us into a new territory for Episode 3, one more involved with the complications of authorship, autonomy and self-embodied narratives. I Am Not a Flopper… featured film director Allen Smithee in a 40 min-long marathon lecture-performance. The film cut through layers of selfrepresentation and surrogacy, discussing through the wide-ranging lecture an obscured history of film production that featured failure as a constant friend. Pitched against this virtuoso performance of a man who never existed was another form of surrogacy – the sculpture that embodied the artist in Sometimes the World is Heavier than an Artist’s Breath. The single black latex balloon was static in the space, its anchoring string disappearing neatly into the concrete floor of the gallery. Alone in the room (with Until it Makes Sense as a silent witness to their encounter) these two works became both actor and audience for each other. Both struggled against their context – the vulnerable sculpture against its environment and the actor against his character.

Mario García Torres, I Am Not a Flopper…, 2007, digital video, 43 mins and Sometimes The World is Heavier than an Artist’s Breath, 2008, helium balloon, drilled into floor – 90 cm round

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Episode 4

The final episode witnessed a return to the focus on gesture with which the exhibition opened, and presented Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign) – now opened to look like a single bumpy length of neon. July 2013 (Pocket Scratch) projected the scratches and wear that had accumulated on the 35mm slide in the artist’s pocket throughout the previous 6 weeks. An accumulation of letters that the artist had been writing to himself, I Promise… were vows that he had been making as he sat at a desk in a variety of hotel rooms, reflecting on what he had done as an artist, and pledging to give the best of himself in years to come. Sometimes the World is Heavier than an Artist’s Breath remained buoyant in the gallery for the final episode, and the tune being whistled in Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi, which had returned for the final episode was by that time recognisable as I promise, which we could by then understand as bearing a tender affinity to the hotel letters.

Mario García Torres, July 2013 (Pocket Scratch), 2007–2013, Black and white negative film, slide mount. Image courtesy of Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Mario García Torres, Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign), 2004–2013, Neon

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Mario García Torres, Until It Makes Sense, 2004–2013, Graphite on wall. Image courtesy of Project Arts Centre, Dublin

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Mario García Torres, I Promise…, 2004–ongoing, Ink on paper, dimensions variable

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Mario GarcĂ­a Torres, Until It Makes Sense, 2013, Installation view of Episode 4

Closing Credits

By the close of the exhibition, Until it Makes Sense was a worn, scratched and smudged patch of the wall, bearing the different handwriting of the different staff members and friends of Project who had signed up to re-write it each day. Printed in vinyl on the gallery wall, was Title Working, an intervention into the list of works. Later found in the pockets of unsuspecting visitors to the exhibition, was a simple black card that said, Département de Distribution du Musée d’Art Moderne, Section Téléphonique and a phone number. But only those who called it know what happened next.

Tessa Giblin, Curator of Visual Arts, Project Arts Centre

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List of Works Mario García Torres Episode 1, 5 July – 13 July 1. Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign),

2004 – 2013, Neon 2. Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi, 2009 – 2013

35mm slides transferred to video, sound, 6'20" 3. Until It Makes Sense, 2004 – 2013

Graphite on wall Episode 2, 15 July – 27 July 1. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger,

2007 – 2013

35mm slides transferred to video, 9'28" 2. What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax

(In 36 Slides), 2004 – 2013

35mm slides transferred to video, 8'53" 3. Cover Letter, 2011 – 2013

35mm slides transferred to video, 2'17" 4. The Variable Dimensions of Art, 2010 – 2013

Archival pigment print onto 6 × 4m self-adhesive

wallpaper, booklet 5. Museo de Arte, Sacramento, 2013 – ongoing

Variable dimensions, mixed media 6. Until It Makes Sense, 2004 – 2013

Graphite on wall Episode 3, 29 July – 10 Aug 1. I Am Not a Flopper…, 2007

Video, 35'42" 2. Sometimes The World is Heavier than

an Artist’s Breath, 2008

Latex balloon, helium, string 3. Until It Makes Sense, 2004 – 2013

Graphite on wall

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UNTIL IT MAKES SENSE

Episode 4, 12 Aug – 17 Aug 1. I Promise…, 2004 – ongoing

Ink on paper, dimensions variable 2. July 2013 (Pocket Scratch), 2007 – 2013

Black and white negative film, slide mount 3. Open (Un Unbent Open Neon Sign),

2004 – 2013, Neon 4. Il aurait bien pu le promettre aussi, 2009 – 2013

35mm slides transferred to video, sound, 6'20" 5. Until It Makes Sense, 2004 – 2013

Graphite on wall Foyer, throughout 1. Sing Like Baldessari, 2004

Video, colour and sound, 14' 2. I promise, (in collaboration with Mario Lopez Landa)

Music, 5'37" 3. Time to Piece, 2011 – 2013

Jigsaw puzzles 4. Title Working, 2004

Intervention on list of works, dimensions variable 5. Département de Distribution du Musée d’Art Moderne,

Section Téléphonique, 2009

Telephone number

Biography Mario García Torres (b. 1975, Monclove, Mexico) received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005 and currently lives in Mexico City. He has presented solo exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, 2015; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2014; Pérez Art Museum Miami, 2014; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2010; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2009; Kunsthalle Zurich, 2008; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2007.

He has participated in group exhibitions including the Berlin Biennale, 2014; the Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2013; Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012; 29th Sao Paulo Biennial, 2010; the 2010 Taipei Biennial; the 2008 Yokohama Triennial; the 8th Panama Biennial, 2008; the 52nd Biennale di Venezia, 2007; and the IX Baltic Triennial if International Art, Vilnius, 2005.

He is the winner of the 2007 Frieze Cartier Award for emerging international artists.

Mario García Torres, Département de Distribution du Musée d’Art Moderne, Section Téléphonique, 2009, Telephone number

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Until It Makes Sense Mario García Torres Published as an edition of Forms of Imagining, a series published

by Project Press based on the exhibitions program of Project Arts Centre.

Dublin, March 2016 ISBN 978-1-872493-50-3 Editor: Tessa Giblin © The Artist, Writer and Project Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission of the publishers.

Text: Tessa Giblin Designed in Ireland by WorkGroup Sub-Editor: Kate Heffernan Series Editor: Emer Lynch Until It Makes Sense Mario García Torres 5 July – 17 August 2013 Project Arts Centre, Dublin Curator: Tessa Giblin Assistant Curator (2013): Ciara McKeon Production Manager: Joseph Collins General Manager (2013): Niamh O’ Donnell Artistic Director: Cian O’Brien Project Press Project Arts Centre 39 East Essex Street Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland + 353 (0)1 881 9613 gallery@projectartscentre.ie www.projectartscentre.ie Project Arts Centre is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Dublin City Council.

With warm thanks to Mario García Torres and Jan Mot, Brussels.