cochi

ektor garcia embroiders, welds, braids, weaves, and stitches in almost perpetual motion. With the fluidity granted to those accustomed to movement, code-switching, and adaptation, garcia teases out the constantly redefined boundaries of a space (un)determined by high and low, genders and cultures, languages and traditions.

Primarily working in sculptural installation, he utilizes a number of self-taught traditional techniques, many from Mexico, like his family. These often marginalized crafts travel and transition, coming to temporarily inhabit white walls, amongst the imagery and materials of queer culture, as well as kink, machismo, and religious iconography. The traditions here are of diverse origins, and together are radical in their resistance of easy identification. Totemic sculptures will appear as exquisite examples of crochet or weaving on one glance, crude instruments of both pain and pleasure on another.

The show’s title comes from a Mexican slang word, often used as a term of affection, that is not an insult but is not not an insult. A state of hybridization and bastardization, or being multiple and neither at once, is key here. Can an artist appropriate his own (sub)culture?

What separates desire from pleasure? Desire looks forward to the always out of reach moment of satisfaction, whereas pleasure is a finite moment of satiety. Pleasure destroys itself in its completeness; desire engenders more of itself. garcia engages in a pursuit of nearly continuous making, depriving the works of climax, leaving space for the viewer, for pluralities, for possibilities. In forestalling a conclusion, garcia disperses desire—the never-ending quest for more.