February 24 - March 15, 2023
From Ivester Contemporary:
“Artist Michael Anthony García’s experience as a Chicano in the U.S. allows him to code-switch between Mexican and U.S. identities while understanding his alienness in both worlds. It is with this cultural lens that he extrapolates to a broader map of truths or questions about reality in general.
For Garcia, Chicanidad is an act of exploration and claiming of space as well as an acknowledgement of a healthy self-othering or personal permission for a self-determined existence. It is the distillation of the ubiquitous image of the known universe with the arrow indicating, “You are here.”
The work presented in entangled portmanteau teases the borders of García’s culturally specific perceptions as well as viewers’ perceptions of the universe and their experiences in it.
Humanity’s interface with reality is a simulation affected by programming and virtuality as depicted in science fiction, or somehow colored by the lived experience of our own histories. With the clock and the calendar’s tick having become blurred during COVID, our collective and individual understandings of the passage of time has evolved to a point deserving of a deeper look, past our linear prejudice. It requires us to take personal ownership of the gates that open to our actual realities.
In entangled portmanteau Garcia builds upon a practice of subconscious introspection of making artwork, and the honesty that comes from self observation. entangled portmanteau coaxes a creative entanglement by testing the fringes of García’s world, or as James Baldwin said, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”
Interdisciplinary artist & independent curator Michael Anthony García, born in El Paso, Texas, with dual Mexican and US citizenship, is based in Austin, Texas, and predominantly focuses his practices around photography/video, sculpture/ installation & performance. He studied art at Austin College in Sherman, Texas where he received his bachelor’s degree and completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a founding member of Los Outsiders curatorial collective & has curated large- scale exhibitions of international artists, in & out of the US.
Notably, he has led solo curatorial projects for Mexic-arte Museum, Texas State University Galleries, the gallery at the Austin Central Public Library and Fusebox Festival. He participated in the 2011 Texas Biennial & has won awards both for his curatorial & 3D work. He co-hosts El Puente, an intersectional conversation podcast, and is publisher for POCa Madre Magazine. García has premiered work for The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Experimental Action Performance Art Biennale in Houston, The Contemporary Austin, SoundSpace at The Blanton Museum of Art, El Museo de la Ciudad de México, and ThreeWalls in Chicago.”
Reception: February 24, 2023 | 7–9 pm
916 Springdale Rd Bldg 2, Suite 107 Austin, TX 78702
Austin, 78702 Texas
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