Dario Escobar: Composições

The solo exhibition by Dario Escobar (Guatemala City, 1971) to be realized at Casa Triângulo, São Paulo, is entitled “Composições” (“Compositions”). This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery and his second solo show in the city. Dario Escobar’s artistic research develops from sculptural and installation acts started with the appropriation of industrial objects. Throughout a path of over fifteen years, the artist has already worked in dialogue with visual traditions as diverse as the Guatemalan baroque, the skin of broken cars and objects seen as symbols of consumerism. His operation as an artist happens from the selection of those pieces and their reconfiguration through actions like juxtaposition and repetition, fragmentation and cut of materials, and a reflection on how to install them inside the exhibition space.

In “Composition”, continuing this investigation, the artist presents new works in Brazil, which propose multiple possibilities of composition through the appropriation and approximation of dissimilar elements. In the series “Geometric construction” and “Modular construction”, Escobar recodes the tradition of painting the back of trucks in Guatemala, creating new patterns that invite the spectator to open them up and enjoy their distinct configurations. The formal research starting with the two-dimensional is also perceptible in his “Motor oil compositions”, in which also using a non-conventional material the artist explores the possibilities of paper and drawing.

Regarding the three-dimensional, in the series “Still-life” the artist explores ways of presenting objects from the sports industry, like basketballs, still aseptic and distant from its use by the human body. In “Balance” there is a tension of the material as well as of the elements mentioned by the artist: on one hand the metal sheets recall the minimalist sculptures of Carl Andre, on the other hand, sustaining its weight, the glass is present in the famous American glasses commercialized in São Paulo since 1940 and already elevated to symbols of Brazilian design.

Besides those works, in dialogue with this sculptural thought that composes through the geometry inherent to ordinary objects, there will be presented new works which will be developed through the meeting between Dario Escobar and the commodities from the popular markets in São Paulo. Therefore, these compositions aim to establish other direct conversations with the Brazilian visual culture, in the same way the artist replies everyday to the industrialized objects used in Guatemala.