Mario Garcia Torres: Present and Absent

Mario Garcia Torres, a Mexican artist based in Los Angeles, interrogates how art history is constructed by revisiting conceptual works from the 1960s and 1970s. His installation "This Painting is Missing/This Painting Has Been Found" (2006) at Art Basel featured blank canvases with painted labels, referencing 23 missing paintings by Edward Ruscha that Gagosian Gallery sought for a catalogue raisonné. In "What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (In 36 Slides)" (2004-2006), he reactivated Robert Barry's 1969 secret work with NSCAD students in Halifax, Canada, by gathering former students without revealing the secret. "Today…(News from Kabul)" (2006) engages Alighiero Boetti's practice by inscribing the latest news from Afghanistan on walls. At Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, "The Transparencies on the Non-Act" (2007) traces the fictional artist Oscar Neuestern, based on a 1969 Art News article by Kiki Kundry. The video "A Brief History of Jimmie Johnson's Legacy" (2006), shown at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, references a Louvre speed record from Godard's "Bande à part" (1964) and Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" (2003). Garcia Torres' work explores absence, disappearance, and the ephemeral nature of art, as encapsulated by Neuestern's quote: "The problem of art for the new generation is to find a way to be both present and absent."