Mario Garcia Torres

Mario Garcia Torres
A Solo Exhibition
September 21th – November 18th 2007

19bis rue des Trois Frères
75018 Paris
contact [​at​] kadist.org
Thursday-Sunday, 2 – 7pm

www.kadist.org

When I met Oscar Neuestern for the first time, I understood that things that go undiscussed are in some ways equivalent to those that are talked about. It was sometimes during 1968. I started visiting Neuestern since I was interested at the time in intentionality. A year later, I published the only text that exists today on Neuestern’s work. That article published in ARTNews was the starting point for the new work by Mario Garcia Torres. The Transparencies on the Non-Act, perfectly reveals Oscar Neuestern’s obsession for the void. While others at the time would carefully move toward the dematerialisation of the work of art, Neuestern was a step ahead: he had built his entire artistic career on absence. This has become the central piece of Garcia Torres’ A Solo Exhibition at the Kadist Art Foundation.

In this group of works Garcia Torres not only puts together the story of someone who lost himself in memory, but insinuates an extended history of erasure and withdrawal. July 2007, August 2007, An Undisclosed Month in 1953 as well as Monochronich Film on a Polychromic Story (all 2007) take Neuesterns’ ideas of the absolute towards a different approach of the refusal of creativity, while relativising its rapport with fiction. I imagine that Neuestern would have been very surprised to discover that his ever-forgetting thoughts became an inspiration for other artists and that his insistence on removal could actually leave revealing traces.

Kiki Kundri

At the occasion of this exhibition, a book “Date Due” is edited by Kadist Art Foundation and published by Revolver. With texts by Raimundas Malasauskas, Steve Rushton and Mario Garcia Torres.

Kadist Art Foundation is a private foundation initiated in 2001. It is dedicated to promoting contemporary art through the constitution of an art collection and the organization of exhibitions and residencies in its space in Paris. Mario Garcia Torres was in residency at Kadist Art Foundation for six months (from April-
September 2007).