entangled portmanteau at Ivester Contemporary

I will have a solo exhibition in the project space at Ivester Contemporary in January 2023.

Artist Michael Anthony García’s experience as a Chicano in the U.S. allows him to code-switch between Mexican and U.S. identities while understanding his alienness in both worlds. It is with this cultural lens that he extrapolates to a broader map of truths or questions about reality in general.

For Garcia, Chicanidad is an act of exploration and claiming of space as well as an acknowledgement of a healthy self-othering or personal permission for a self-determined existence. It is the distillation of the ubiquitous image of the known universe with the arrow indicating, “You are here.”

The work presented in entangled portmanteau teases the borders of García’s culturally specific perceptions as well as viewers’ perceptions of the universe and their experiences in it.

Humanity’s interface with reality is a simulation affected by programming and virtuality as depicted in science fiction, or somehow colored by the lived experience of our own histories. With the clock and the calendar’s tick having become blurred during COVID, our collective and individual understandings of the passage of time has evolved to a point deserving of a deeper look, past our linear prejudice. It requires us to take personal ownership of the gates that open to our actual realities.

In entangled portmanteau Garcia builds upon a practice of subconscious introspection of making artwork, and the honesty that comes from self observation. entangled portmanteau coaxes a creative entanglement by testing the fringes of García’s world, or as James Baldwin said, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”

Thank you to Kevin Ivester, Savannah Diaz, Kimberly Pollini, Jeannie Hua, Christine Gwilim and Aidyn Mancenido for the support of the production of this project.