Mario García Torres: Solo

As part of it’s program during the museum’s temporary closure due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Museo Jumex will present Mario García Torres: Solo from June 2 until its reopening. García Torres will occupy Gallery 1 of the closed museum, making use of the space as a private studio to create new work. A daily live stream of the gallery will be available on the museum’s website and the exhibition will be accompanied by video interviews, digital publications, and educational activities.

Solo is produced in response to the temporary closure of cultural institutions and the abrupt changes to artists’ production as a result of the current pandemic. The exhibition is a means for the artist to reconsider the relationship between the artist, the studio, the public, and the institution during the current hiatus from exhibitions around the world. García Torres’s projects frequently draw from contemporary art history, particularly post-minimalism and conceptualism that once challenged institutions and have since become part of the institutional canon. In Solo, the artist references, and in some ways inverts, existing themes of gallery closures, dust in art, and poured paintings. It also refers to artists’ retreats and residencies, and a traditional, romantic image of the artist working alone in their studio. By occupying a space within a contemporary art museum as his own, the artist will explore these notions both through research and making during this unexpected period of reflection on our current and future conditions.

Mario García Torres: Solo is part of Museo Jumex’s online program entitled “Museo en casa.” García Torres was invited to produce the project as a means to continue the museum’s work with artists during this period, and as an opportunity to open up a dialogue about the impact on cultural institutions that the pandemic has caused.