My conceptual interests –understanding the present by looking into the past and recognizing the potential of images to resonate and prompt a universe of associations in the collective memory– guide my practice of transforming found material into collages, sculptures, and video installations. In my investigation I turn to scientific studies such as geology, archeology, and cartography to explore forms of fragmentation and material reinterpretation. My work seeks to redefine natural realms and their generative processes, presenting them as incomplete and ambiguous spaces where multiple times and topographies seem to unfold in unison.

Mi práctica es guiada por intereses críticos relacionados al entendimiento del presente a través de una mirada al pasado y a la capacidad evocativa de las imágenes para resonar y desencadenar un universo de asociaciones en la memoria colectiva; estos intereses transforman materiales encontrados en collages, esculturas y video instalaciones. En mi investigación recurro a temas como la geología, arqueología y cartografía para explorar formas de fragmentación y reinterpretación de material documentado y racionalizado por la ciencia que estudia la composición, evolución e historia de la Tierra. Mi obra busca reinterpretar estadíos naturales y sus procesos generativos presentándolos como espacios incompletos y ambiguos en donde se fusionan múltiples tiempos y topografías.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 2008-2010: MA Fine Arts, Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom.
• 2000-2005: BA Fine Arts, Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna, Lima, Peru.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2014: Americas Society’s Commission for David Rockefeller Atrium, Americas Society, New York, USA.
• 2006: Special Mention , 12th International Arts and Digital Cultures Festival of Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
• 2006: Second Prize, 9th French-Peruvian Contest of Visual Arts “Pasaporte para un Artista”, Lima, Peru.
• 2004: Production Prize, 2nd Peruvian Contest of Video and Electronic Arts, Lima, Peru.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “All The Pieces Back Together”, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
• 2013: “La Chambre“, Elaine Levy Project, Brussels, Belgium.
• 2012: “History Decomposes Into Images, Not Into Narratives”, Revolver Galeria, Lima, Peru.
• 2011: “Elena Damiani and Alois Godinat“, Elaine Levy Project, Brussels, Belgium.
• 2011: “The Second Treasury of Stanleth”, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
• 2011: “Vanishing Point Vantage Point”, Dohyang Lee Galerie, Paris, France.
• 2007: “Sites”, Galeria Vertice, Lima, Peru.
• 2005: “1st International Print Biennale – Prints and Motion “, Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Corriente Alterna, Lima, Peru.
• 2005: “Geo”, Sala Luis Miro Quesada Garland, Lima, Peru.
• 2003: “Moción animal”, Espacio La Culpable, Lima, Peru.

Group Exhibitions

• 2015: “THEOREM, You Simply Destroy the Image I Always Had of Myself“, Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, USA.
• 2015: “Vienna Biennale – Future Light: Escaping Transparency“, MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria.
• 2015: “All the World’s Futures“, 56 Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy.
• 2014: “Idea of Fracture – Opinione Latina P.2“, Francesca Minini, Milan, Italy.
• 2014: “Spatial Acts: Americas Society Commissions Art“, Americas Society, New York, USA.
• 2014: “BIM Bienal de la Imagen y Movimiento“, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2013: “Project 35 Volume 2“, ICI Independent Curators International, touring exhibition.
• 2013: “Videoarte 01- Reopening the blackbox of technology“, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Lima, Peru.
• 2013: “9th Bienal do Mercosul“, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
• 2013: “Ciclorama“, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico.

Collections

• Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico.
• Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, USA.
• Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland.
• Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Caracas / New York, Venezuela / USA.

• Artists

Artist: Darío Escobar

Unions and Intersections
November 11 – December 12, 2014
Nilsstaerk Gallery
Copenhagen, Denmark

The title of the exhibition Unions and Intersections underlines a general theme in Escobar’s work. The chosen objects, which make up Escobar’s sculptures become markers and signs of both unions and intersections through the way they are arranged and their conversion into art.

Most of the works presented in the exhibition are sculptures made partially or entirely out of sporting goods such as footballs, basketballs, or billiard cues. Sports have been a recurring theme in Escobar’s work in recent years. However, one is not looking at the work of a sports-obsessed artist; someone who cannot get enough of the life-affirming thrills sports can offer. For Escobar these sporting effects are, to a much larger degree, signs of multinational brands and movements, which in the last decades have swept across the world and made any distinction between the local and the global impossible.

To Escobar sports and the culture that surrounds it is inseparable from a worldwide consumerism that offers itself as a ticket to an international community if one is prepared to pay the price. By using effects from this culture Escobar calls attention to this particular situation, though without pointing fingers at sports fans. His work is also not to be understood as a sarcastic comment on the global art world or art market because of its ability to absorb such commercial elements. The works are a sincere investigation of complex power structures, including the relationship between art and consumerism.

Darío Escobar lives and works in Guatemala City. He has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them, Gold, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, and Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (all 2014); Confusion in the Vault, Museo Jumex, México D.F. (2013); 2013 California-Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Darío Escobar/La experiencia del objeto, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Santiago, Chile, Singular/Plural,  SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, and The Island: A Game of Life, Gallery One, Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (all 2012); Los impolíticos, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy, Périfériks, Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Mundus Novus, 53 Biennale di Venezia, Venice (all 2009); and Poetics of the Handmade, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007). Escobar’s monograph A Singular Plurality: The Works of Darío Escobar was published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

• Happenings