Benjamìn Torres: Diario Se Cuela la Luz, Diario Se Fuga el Color

Hilario Galguera gallery presents Benjamín Torres‘ solo exhibition Diario se cuela la luz, diario se fuga el color. The show, curated by Gabriel Florenz, will comprise entirely of new works created by the artist in New York in 2015 and in Mexico City in 2016.

Diario se cuela la luz, diario se fuga el color showcases new pieces that derive from recent explorations of the methods of containment, presentation and exhibition of art. Torres selected a group of discarded windows and doors – elements that serve both as barriers and access points – and intervened them with newspaper and solid blocks of paint. This results in the elaboration of ideas that have circled the imaginary of the artist since the beginning of his career, such as intimacy and voyeurism, stating that each time something is hidden, something else gets revealed and vice-versa.

Closely related to painting, these works allow Benjamín Torres to freely navigate through geometry, abstraction and composition without getting involved with a previously existing image, as he formerly did with iconic pictures from massive media that he took and transformed in order to discuss concepts such as globalization, role of gender, publicity and economy. All materials used are seen anew under this new aesthetic in the vein of Asemic writing – one that has the look of writing but has no literal meaning.

The resemblance of the pieces to a commonly used practice in many metropoles, in which the windows of old and abandoned buildings are usually covered up in newspaper, also creates a bridge between the former industrial site in Brooklyn, where Torres began this body of work, and Mexico City’s overdeveloped urban landscape.

The exhibition will also include a large-scale installation in which the artist re-creates a gallery that belongs to a dysfunctional art system: Torres’ own accumulated oeuvre is hung but results physically impossible for the public to see, interrupting the form in which a work of art is shown and consumed.

Benjamín Torres lives and works in Mexico City. Graduated in Visual Arts from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in drawing from The Art Student’s League New York. He received the support from the Program for the Promotion for Cultural Projects and Joint Ventures, FONCA and the scholarship of Young Creators, FONCA. His work has been on view in solo and group shows in Mexico, Spain and Germany. Some of his solo exhibitions in museums include Museo de Arte Moderno, Museo de San Carlos and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Oaxaca. He was a resident artist in El Ganzo in Los Cabos, Mexico (2013), in Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Mexico (2014) and in Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, USA (2015).

Gabriel Florenz was born in Berkeley, California and raised in central Mexico. He is currently the director of Pioneer Works, a non-profit cultural center he helped found in 2012. He has curated and organised numerous art exhibitions including, Shezad Dawood It was a time that was a time, The Hiroshima Panels, Molly Lowe’s Redwood and most recently Derrick Adams ON.