DORA GARCIA
Born in 1965, Valladolid (Spain). Lives and works in Brussels.
Aliento, 2000
Photograph
Courtesy of Dora Garcia and the Juana de Aizpuru gallery, Madrid
The Respiratory Lesson, 2001
DVD, video in colour with sound, 10’
Courtesy of the artist, Brussels
Dora Garcia belongs to a generation of artists that, like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Ann Veronica Janssens, have applied a sentimental dimension to the structures and forms of minimalist and conceptual art, transforming the politics of immateriality into poetry. Dora Garcia’s work, her objects, performances and texts, always consist of the establishment of a distance, a relation to the other founded in confinement or radical separation. Aliento is a work characteristic of the simplicity of the effected gestures by Dora Garcia; a breath forms a blind stain on the glass, turning transparency opaque, the puff humidifies on the cold, flat surface of the glass, making an ephemeral print of an invisible presence, fixing evanescence. The Respiratory Lesson presents a bizarre training session in which a young girl obeys the stimuli and orders of a trainer situated behind her. Without a word, with the exhalations serving as communication, an ambiguous relationship of control and submission is established between teacher and student, evoking athletic performance, erotic relationship, and domination, appearing as an insidious visual code etched into their bodies.
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