Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Artist of the day, September 9, 2020: Darío Escobar, a Guatemalan conceptual artist (#1089)

 Darío Escobar (1971) is a well-known Guatemalan conceptual artist born in Guatemala City. His work is characterized by the investigation of formal and conceptual aspects of objects and their function in visual arts. He famously uses common and mass-produced materials in conjunction with traditional Guatemalan artisanal techniques and mythological references. Escobar graduated from Rafael Landívar University and studied visual arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas “Rafael Rodríguez Padilla” in Guatemala City.

His work often combines the present and the past in interesting confrontations. Escobar looks for ways to show how the artistic experience of Guatemala’s history and its religious symbols are related to or overlap with the visual culture of today. Skateboards, ping-pong rackets, and baseball bats are covered with silver to look like religious reliquaries. Rubber bicycle tires snake across long spaces referencing a pre-Hispanic mythological creature. Soccer balls are a frequent material in his body of work – a familiar object altered. These conglomerations, repurposed and reconfigured, make people look at mass produced objects anew.

Escobar has been included in many solo and group shows worldwide, including Guatemala City, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Sydney, Paris, Toronto and Caracas. He participated at various Biennales such as the 10 th Havana Biennale, and the 53 rd Venice Biennale in 2009, where the artist represented Latin America. His work also features in numerous collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA), the Daros Collection in Zurich, Switzerland, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundacion and the Colección JUMEX in Mexico, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina, among others.


© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Darío Escobar. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

 


Mr. Darío Escobar

2000, Cool

2003, untitled

2005, Double game

2009, KuKulkan II

2010, Crash XV

2010, Obverse Reverse

2011, Bicho raro Nº 1

2011, Obverse & Reverse (Cloud XI)

2011, Untitled [Skateboard]

2011, Urban landscape

2012 Geometric construction Nº 2

2012, Transparent sculpture Nº. 1

2013, Turbulence XI

2014, Escultura Transparente VI

2014, Grid Nº 02

2014, Still Life Nº 6

2015, Equilibrio Nº 1

2015, Equilibrio Nº 2

2015, Floor

2015, Modular Construction Nº 7

2015, Untitled Nº 1

2015, Untitled Nº 6

2016, Composiciones Azules, Nº 6

2016, Red Composition, Nº 04

2017, Red Star Nº 2

2017, Construcción Modular Nº 12

2017, Obverse & Reverse XXXVI

2018, Urban Landscape (Detroit)

2018, Blue Composition

2018, Geometric Composition Nº 8

2018, Geometric Composition Nº 10

2018, Red Composition

2018, Transformers, installation

2018, Uncertainty Principle, Installation

2018, Uncertainty Principle, Installation

2019, Crash XXV

2019, Crash XXVII

2019, Lo que no es bueno para uno, no es necesariamente malo para otro

 


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