Paris. It has been a year since a new addition to the Parisian exhibition scene emerged, the Kadist Art Foundation, located in an unusual setting for contemporary art, namely Montmartre. The art venue, which developed out of a private collection, has distinguished itself with high-quality exhibitions comprised of works selected with a sure hand and has proven, like the Maison Rouge, to be a place where collecting art is seen as a commitment to its development. Artists are regularly invited for residencies. Most recently Mario Garcia Torres, who is now presenting the result of his two-month stay in Paris with a small but impressive show, »A Solo Exhibition«, about nothingness and its appropriation.
»There one’s eyes are finally opened, in the dark. In the darkness that is no longer afraid of any light« – in his short essay on the fine arts, »Le monde et le pantalon«, Samuel Beckett showed very clearly to what extent seeing is dependent on the invisible. The darkness, which only becomes darkness when it is seen, resonates in response to Mario Garcia Torres’ works. The 32-year-old artist, who was born in Mexico, lives and works in Los Angeles. He used his visit to Paris, the »city of light« for studies on the absence and appropriation of images. What do we see when we look at paintings? That is the guiding question in his »Solo Exhibition«, which, with four projections and one sound piece, does not show a single painting. In Paris, the »city of mirrors«, as Walter Benjamin once called it, in which »even the eyes of the passers-by are veiled mirrors«, a response to that question must always also assert: we see »the Other« and in him ourselves. Garcia Torres positions his work between these two poles, asks how the invisible can be seen and how the Other can be appropriated.
The multitude of artists living in Paris flock to the doors of galleries and institutions in the hope of having their work exhibited. Those who are visible become part of the whole art-world merry-go-round. Those who remain invisible are not on board. But art arises from invisible processes: thoughts, imaginings, doubts, hopes. More recent initiatives seek to offer greater scope for this, to provide more safe havens for exchange, discussion, risk. In October a venue fostering crossovers between art and science opened next to the Palais Royal in the form of »Le Laboratoire«. The laboratory picks up on what has meanwhile become a widespread affinity between the fine arts and what are known as the exact sciences – and will at times also work on the frontiers of representability.
As they arrive visitors are confronted with the scraping sound of rubbing-out in »An Undisclosed Month in 1953« – a reference to the drawing by Willem de Kooning erased by Robert Rauschenberg. »July 2007« and »August 2007« are projections of a transparent slide, which shows nothing but the traces left by being carried around in the artist’s pocket. The question of time is also always part of the equation when seeing and appropriation are addressed. »Monochronic Film On A Polychronic Story« shows a series of dates in the form of a black-and-white 16mm film and picks up on On Kawara’s gesture. These are dates that have played a role in cinema films, starting with 5th December 1791, the date of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death, and ending with 14th December 2016, the day when the world will end – at least according to a medium in »Ghostbusters 2«.
When we can no longer trust our eyes, belief comes into play and, along with it, fiction. »The Transparencies on the Non-Act« narrates in black and white slides, which present the events of the narrative as subtitles, the story of the – genuine? – artist Oskar Neuestern, and talks of emptiness and absence as an act. Grappling with this conceptual artist, who works on nothingness and the transience of artworks, gives structure to the exhibition. Just as one cannot know whether Neuestern is a real, living individual, one has no inkling of what one actually sees when one looks at an artwork. The well-armed eye turns every singular observation of art into an act of »we«, of the community.
»Dr. Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen« (»Dr. Murke’s Collected Silence«) by Heinrich Böll demonstrates how onerous this community can be. In the small project book published parallel to the exhibition, »Date Due«, Steve Rushton has produced an English version of the short story about the radio journalist, who has to edit comments by the Catholic Dr. Bur-Malottke and must replace the word »God« with »the higher being that we honour« to produce something fit to broadcast. An appropriation that also derives new facets from the story, like the way in which Garcia Torres works on the figure of Neuestern. Mario Garcia Torres shows art as the appropriation of other forms, as picking up on narratives that have already been related. An exhibition as a »cadavre exquis«: one only ever sees the tip, which one picks up in order to carry on working. In his essay Raimundas Malasauskas talks about »Kiev Exquisite« and about how a Surrealist game can become a political survival strategy. Garcia Torres presents a transparent exhibition, its agreeable visual stillness reminding us of how much the visible owes to the invisible.
Translated by Helen Ferguson