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    ektor garcia: matéria prima

     
    Lower Level Galleries
    April 02, 2022 — September 04, 2022
    Across his artistic practice, ektor garcia (b. 1985, Red Bluff, California) challenges the hierarchies of gendered and racialized labor, combining a queer punk sensibility with the handcraft traditions of Mexico, his ancestral homeland.  
    In textiles, ceramics, and metalwork, frequently in combination with found materials, garcia engages vernacular and craft practices historically cast in diminutive or marginalized roles, ascribing renewed value through intimate, ritual processes. The resulting objects are hybrid in nature—both malleable and solid, dense and porous, sharp and tender—evoking the body and its labor as a source of pleasure and pain, rupture and healing. Pieces are often reconfigured; textiles are made and unmade. Undoing the knots is as important as reknotting to find new points of connection and possibility. For his exhibition at the Henry, garcia worked with faculty, staff, and students at the University of Washington’s Ceramic and Metal Arts Building to create a series of new linked-chain sculptures made in ceramic, copper, and glass. Comprised of individual, interlocking links, these chains will form a series of mutual and contingent relationships across their constitutive parts as they suspend and drape throughout the double-height volume of the gallery. Integrated among the linked-chain sculptures, garcia will install a collection of objects from his Mexico City studio, along with butterflies made of crocheted copper wire that escape the confines of the gallery and inhabit interstitial spaces of the museum. A complimentary exhibition publication will accompany the exhibition.

    Artist Fellowship Program

    ektor garcia is a participating artist in the Henry’s Artist Fellowship Program, which is intended to advance artistic inquiry through the mutual exchange between invited artists and the larger University of Washington community. It is designed as a generative program that promotes dynamic collaboration and facilitates artistic development, aligning the Henry's commitment to innovation and inquiry with the University's standing as a leader in research. The 2022 pilot year of the Artist Fellowship Program is made possible by the Jones Endowed Fund for the Arts.

    Artist Bio

    ektor garcia earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University. He has completed residencies at International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York; Cove Park, Argyll and Bute, Scotland; and Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, Michigan. garcia has held solo exhibitions at Progetto, Puglia, Italy; Sculpture Center, New York; and Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, among others. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, China; New Museum, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; and Prospect, New Orleans.

    Publication

    CREDITS

    ektor garcia: matéria prima is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Curator, and supported in part by a generous gift from Lee Rhodes and Peter Seligmann. New work created by garcia as part of the Henry Artist Fellowship Program was funded through a grant from the Jones Endowed Fund for the Arts.

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