For the fifth episode of our series, we visited Alejandro García Contreras’ studio at Pioneer Works as part of his residency while he was finalizing the presentation for “Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?”, or “Who hasn’t tried turning a stone into a memory?”, which marks his first institutional exhibition. Best known for elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate interests that range widely, from popular culture and eroticism, to global art history and the occult, this body of work expands on Contreras’ practice around the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization.

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How would you describe your current studio?

“I am doing a residency here in Pioneer Works, and we are in that studio, where I’ve been producing the next exhibition. The first part I started in Montana in February, in another residency with Archie Bray, which was a whole one month of ceramic production. I sent it for the exhibition, and I’ve been here for almost a month now, producing all the other parts, which are the sculptures assembled in concrete. There is another part which is actually a video, all these little clips that took almost two years to collect the whole files. I will say this is one of the first times so many different elements are joined together to create content itself, which is connected through the symbols or the images that are contained in many of these works.
Something that I’ve been realizing here in New York is how every place is affecting your way of production and also your way to understand the culture itself, like the place where you are. For example, here in New York, it’s more about the speediness of the city. The material is also in a way connected to the identity of the city, because it’s concrete. And in the moment, I realize these objects start to look like buildings, like skyscrapers. So they are not anymore just the totems. The original idea.”

Pioneer Works, Installation View, *Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?*

You’re currently working on your upcoming show. Can you tell us more about the meaning behind the exhibition, and what it symbolizes?

“Right now I am finishing a series of these concrete sculptures, and I am creating an installation. This project is based on the idea of transmutation of the body. This is going to be kind of like ancient ruins from a civilization who was living in this place before. I am pretending that these are the leftovers from this moment of time, if something cool happens, like a cataclysm or something, and create a burial site for a character who was living in this moment of time, and trying to connect all the elements through certain narratives.”

Is there anything you like to listen to/watch/read/look at etc. for inspiration?

“One of the main origins of this project that has been happening for at least nine years, starts with this trip in 2015, in the south of France, when I visited the Le Palais Ideal, which was built by a mailman called Ferdinand Cheval. So I’m trying to take a little bit of the passion of this guy through my own passion in art, but also giving a kind of significant homage to Cheval through all of these idols, totems, and constructions that I’m doing. The main topic, which is the idea of passing through another existence or dying is kind of the chain that connects all these elements together.”