Darío Escobar

́Play Off ́ was the first term that supplied the coordinates for the exhibit. In a literal sense, “play off” refers to a series of games played after the regular season is over with the goal of determining a league champion, and which the fans ́ enthusiasm have transformed into a true media and economic phenomenon. Applied to the subject we are addressing, the title contributed an ironic sense to the traditional values of sculpture. It plays – never better expressed – with all those values that were fundamental for sculpture: its attempt to transcend time, its sense of heroic celebration, its insertion in the landscape, its ideological singularity, and its interaction with entertainment. In their historical legacy, monuments have need of the scenified space to celebrate their own existence. As a counterpoint, the unmonumentality of Escobar ́s oeuvre resides in his mise-en- scène of insignificant objects. His works are small sculptures in which the sense of large scale is merely a memory, or by omission, it is the point of departure to diagnose an epoch that identifies itself best with the values of immediacy and waste.

As Massimiliano Gioni pointed out with regard to the exhibition Unmonumental, we find ourselves in an era defined by the destruction of the notion of sculpture rather than by its creation. The fall of the Berlin Wall, or the disappearance of other great constructions that were the epithets for the ideologies of modernity, have marked our recent history and challenge the old notion of the indestructible associated to the utilization and handling of hard materials such as marble, stone or bronze. Today, industrial objects, common and massively produced, define us in the best way: they represent culture or infuse us with culture. They are crucial for consumer societies, whether they have a practical use or not. For this reason, Darío Escobar ́s oeuvre connects us with a whole range of objects built in this state of weak values. The artist ́s first object interventions and small sculptures, created in the early 90s, drew on the paraphernalia of religious sculptures from the colonial period, on the tradition of ancient techniques used in the Baroque style, quilting with gold leaf and embossment with precious metals, which he applied to disposable everyday objects with a strong presence in contemporary urban culture. By then, his sculpture-pieces were unmistakable; they succeeded in remarking – as in a footnote – critiques of social conventions, of the dominant power structures as well as the long-standing force of structures that have persisted since colonial days in Guatemala, his native country. However, artisanal techniques and skills lost their leading role, and objects survived over time and in a more minimalist condition. The author ́s works aligned with the certainty propounded by Lyotard, for whom the idea of “chronological historical frameworks” had died with the advent of Post-modernism.

Indeed, in Darío Escobar ́s works this change in relationships is recorded through certain discourses which are no longer credible or do not suffice to guarantee, as they pretended, a political, social and cultural commitment. The lack of value of many activities has been promptly substituted for the ability to blend into or become something different and more in tune with the circumstances. At the beginning of the past century, Stendhal had already noticed that physical strength had ceased to be man ́s ideal, and that it had been replaced by flexibility, velocity, or the metamorphic capacity of objects. For this reason, it is no wonder that a skateboard or a ping-pong paddle should be divided into several fragments. Linked together by means of hinges, they are transformed into an accordion to recreate the object ́s capacities for movement and its disposition for playfulness. In other words, they recreate the notion of copy-paste, one of the most common exercises in the writing of texts, in the reproduction of originals, in the mass production of analogous products that welcome simulation and all forms of trompe-l’œil.

In this landscape of transmutations, the fact that ́Play Offs ́ included images rather than final objects must be highlighted. A series of tops joined together by metal bars described the trajectory of the toy rather than its condition as palpable and rigid object. A series of baseball bats affixed onto a wall denied their original use at the same time that they made an imaginary rendition simulating the flaming body of a racecar. Both art-pieces operated in the unconscious and its shadows. On viewing Escobar ́s work, the spectator complemented whatever was missing between object and space, between image and form. This also reinforced the importance that the memory of the materials has had for this author. Namely, the capacities of the resources he utilizes to produce his works, which even determine their position in the exhibition space, the way in which they inhabit it, and mainly, their own way of demanding a return to their original state. In this respect, it is necessary to highlight one of this author ́s most important works, the one he created with bicycle tires. Its origin may be found in his monumental project entitled ́Serpentario ́/ ́Snake House ́. Exhibited for the first time at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala, and currently incorporated in the Jumex Collection in Mexico, this work plays with rubber ́s characteristics of malleability. The tires have been cut and they are linked together. They hang from the ceiling and their weight is balanced by a series of bronze weights. But the original shape of the tires dominates the structure and, in an imperceptible way, forces it to return to its primitive state. We are talking about a sculpture with a life of its own, with variable measurements and dimensions.

In general, Darío Escobar’s work adopts peculiar ways of relating us to common objects. The alteration of the familiar demands that the viewer re-examine elements from his immediate context in order to assign new uses and meanings to them. One of the most important works in the exhibition was the one entitled Obelisco II/Obelisk II. As its name indicates, it was, indeed, an obelisk, but formed by billiards cues. If an obelisk is a stone monument with four equal trapezoidal faces, this sculpture-piece replicated it but using ludic objects that denoted the banalization of those ancient values on which great civilizations were based. The project gained further in strength and ironies when one discovered that it had been carried out during a residency of the artist in Queens, NY, where many immigrants from Central America have settled. Coinciding with a year plethoric with sports feats, the Olympic Games in Beijing and other parameters of showbusiness, ́Play Offs ́ might be explained as a tribute to objects related to sports. But, as an activity abiding by a number of rules, yet carried out with a wish to compete, to engage in constant entertainment and challenges, Darío Escobar ́s exhibition was, more exactly, a series of objects rebelling against their traditional use. Its narrative time was, rather, the one of paradoxes.

Profile :

Darío Escobar was born in Guatemala, in 1971. He divides his time between Guatemala and New York, where he lives and works. He has had a number of group and solo shows. Most recent among the latter are Playoffs, at Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York (2008); La Línea Interrumpida, KBK Gallery, Mexico City/ Centro Cultural Metropolitano (CCM), Guatemala City, Guatemala (2007); Darío Escobar/ Project room, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2006); Objetos en Tránsito, Sala Gasco, Santiago de Chile, Chile (2006); Espacios provisionales, MuseumofContemporaryArtandDesign (MADC),San José, Costa Rica (2003); Visual Entertainments, Museum of Modern Art, Mérida, Mexico (2003).
His works are represented in important collections, among them, the DAROS/Latinamerica Collection, Zurich; The Jumex Collection, Mexico DF; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) Collection, and the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles; The Blanton Museum, Texas; Miami Art Central (MAC-MAM), Miami; The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina; and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), Costa Rica,
as well as Galerie Gang, Holland.