Artist ektor garcia‘s piece la llorona is installed at the Shed now that Frieze has opened its doors, but when garcia got on the phone with ARTnews last Thursday, all he had ready was a suitcase full of materials and a few ideas. While the prospect of creating a work in five days might provoke panic in another artist, garcia was feeling calm and upbeat about what was to come.
“I have plenty of ideas but I don’t like to plan anything,” said garcia in a phone call shortly after landing at Newark Liberty International Airport. His solo show at James Fuentes, titled “esfuerzo,” had closed at the end of April, and he was looking forward to getting back to work.
For this installation, part of the work was to involve the disassembling of past works. garcia was returning to New York from Chicago, where he had gone to pick up some works—ceramic tears that were glazed in a shiny metallic paint, others left in raw earth tones of stone white and terracotta—that had been on view at Prairie gallery in 2020. But main component of the piece is made from yet another work, recently shown at Rebecca Camacho Presents in San Francisco, he was repurposing: a 15–foot tapestry he had made by adjoining copper links. Since these pieces hadn’t sold, he would disassemble what he could to fashion la llorona...
Shanti Escalante-De Mattei
