ART CITIES:Vienna -Mario García Torres
Mario García Torres works with very specific elements (hidden stories, rumours or un-clarified details) from the history of art, film, other artists, events from the past, etc. These investigations transform into stories that can take the form of diaporamas, videos, books, curated exhibitions or postcards, to mention just a few of the possibilities.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: TBA21 Archive
The exhibition “An Arrival Tale” uses a conceptual gesture that detaches the works by the artist in the TBA21 Collection from their original contexts and descriptions and offers them as a collection of stories and artistic experiments open for reinscription thereby addressing the contemporary conditions and urgencies of our societies. As the artist says about the exhibition “An Arrival Tale is an exhibition that pretends to use a number of my works from the TBA21 Collection to argue that the space of arrival, the space where one can reinvent oneself, could be an interesting one, and one that has historically been a space to thrive”. The exhibition was conceived in light of TBA21’s engagements with the contemporary refugee crisis and, more generally, within the condition of continuous global migration and displacement. The exhibition seeks to collect, describe, and complicate narratives of transplantation, pointing to migrations, displacements, relocations, and resettlements, which span both time and disparate geographies. It also proposes to read the story of exile in the framework of Paolo Virno’s notion of an “engaged withdrawal,” a strategy of slipping away from oppressive power with the intention of creating new communities. The concept is signposted loosely by two narrative moments, the arrival and the return, manifested through two specific artworks: the former through “Tea” and the latter through a new commission titled “The Way They Looked at Each Other”, exploring an existing body of research originally investigated for an essay by García Torres published in Frieze in 2012.
Info: Curator: Daniela Zyman, Assistant Curator: Cory Scozzari, TBA21-Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Privatstiftung, Atelier Augarten, Scherzergasse 1A, Vienna, Duration: 17/6-20/11/16, Days & Hoours: Wed-Thu 12:00-17:00, Fri-sun 12:00-19:00, www.tba21.org
