By Emily Small
ektor garcia: Loose Ends
San José Museum of Art (Loose Ends), San Jose, CA
October 17, 2025–June 7, 2026
I love ektor garcia’s art. Often it appears as crochet or knotted wire, sometimes accompanied by shells, horse hair, or leather, suspended off the wall, into vignettes that recall something both domestic and industrial. It is hardness made soft and softness made hard. It records periods of time. He undoes his meticulous work only to do it up again, so works rarely, if ever, settle into a final state. Instead, he translates and transports the energy of one sculpture into the next. He once told me that the man he buys his copper from was convinced garcia was an electrician.
For us to have two ektor garcia exhibitions at this moment is a sweet thing. At Rebecca Camacho, his copper curtains are mixed among new material explorations of rafia, porcelain, and metal sheeting. Exploded doilies that will never soil corral the gallery. I imagine they only grow more intense with time; that if they ever were left untouched, a partnership with the Earth would oxidize them a brilliant green. Land becoming craft becomes land once again. The exhibition at the San José Museum of Art is garcia’s first California-based museum solo. He was born and raised here in Northern California, and the work in the installation is continuous with his ongoing exploration of place, transformation, and identity.
