¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?
Alejandro García Contreras
¿Quién no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?, or Who hasn't tried to turn a stone into a memory?, marks the first institutional solo exhibition by Alejandro García Contreras. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, the artist is best known for elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate interests that range widely, from popular culture and eroticism, to global art history and the occult. Inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, the exhibition blends Contreras’s ceramic practice with earlier interests in concrete pouring, photography, and experimental video.
Within the exhibition, various components appear on mounds of sand, like remnants of a forgotten tomb. Concrete pillars and ornamental sculptures, cast on site during Contreras’ Summer 2024 residency at Pioneer Works, surround a porcelain skeleton that bears witness to the metaphorical passage of time. Various plants, both dead and alive, allude to a desolate desert landscape are also placed onto the sand—a material that not only provides the basis for ceramics but, more importantly, represents the final transformation from flesh to dust that is central to countless religious philosophies.
Adjacent to these sculptures and objects is a concrete wall frame, embedded with painted, ceramic eyes. Conceived as a portal into the artist’s personal memories, it becomes a container for a procession of landscape images, each shot in the various locales that he has visited in recent years. A video installation, captured by a cell phone camera and projected vertically, serves as a meditation on the mobile omnipresence that dominates how contemporary life is recorded and broadcast. By situating his own lived experiences within the sculptural environment, Contreras considers what defines personhood, from objects to memories and contemplates their meaning within the context of life and death.
In conceiving these works, Contrerast studied a wide range of referential sources including relics and beliefs from ancient pagan civilizations; Jungian archetypes; the writings of Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Campbell; and television series such as Thundercats and Sailor Moon. Also of particular significance are two architectural sites: Le Palais Idéal in Hauterives, France, which was intended to become a mausoleum for a postal worker who toiled fastidiously for over three decades to create an eventual burial site for himself and the Temple of the Inscriptions in Chiapas, Mexico, a Mayan burial site that Contreras recalls as an important representation of his childhood.
An assemblage in the truest sense, ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? explores the dichotomy between the ephemerality of human beings and the material objects that they leave behind. Contreras asks, “What defines us as individuals? Is it the things created and accumulated in life, or is it the memories of the soul? Do we keep anything with us in our transition to death?”
Alejandro Garcia Contreras: ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? is curated by Gabriel Florenz. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the Artist
Alejandro García Contreras (b. 1982 in Tapachula Chiapas, Mexico) characterizes his creative work by experimentation and dialogue between different materials and technical resources, making his work a mix between various media such as painting, sculpture, photography, video and graphics. The themes of his work are linked to his personality and through his artistic projects, he explores topics and themes inspired by contemporary popular culture, Mexican folklore, myth, occultism and religion. He holds a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Mexico City, Mexico. His work was the winning acquisition of the 2006 Artfest WTC and he is a two-time recipient of the FONCA / Young Creators Scholarship. Contreras has held solo exhibitions at Proyecto NASAL, Gamma Galleria, House of Gaga, Travesia Cuatro, Saenger Galeria and Eito Eiko, among others. He has been included in art fairs including NADA, New York and Miami with Swivel Gallery and ArtOsaka with Eito Eiko. Contreras recently completed a residency in Paris, through Art Explora in collaboration with Cité internationale des arts.