Laurence Miller Gallery is pleased to present "In-dependencias," the first United States one-man show by Spanish artist Miguel Angel Garcia.
The ten large-scale color photographs selected from the series "In-dependencias," produced between 2009 and 2012, are based on panoramic photographs taken by Garcia from culturally symbolic watchtowers that overlook the twenty-seven capitals of the European Union, such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris (above), the Acropolis in Athens, and St. Paul's Cathedral in London (below). Garcia then digitally paints the images, initially blanketing them in white as if seen through a veil of snow, which gives all the cities a unified appearance. This is followed by the selective application of red pigment to extract repeating infrastructural details such as smoke stacks in Paris, skylights in Berlin and London, chimneys in Vienna and Stockholm. This combined intervention highlights the contradictions between individualism, national identity, and the larger membership in a political union of many nations and cultures. The final prints act as a sort of x-ray of the in-dependencies within all the European Union capitals. Also included will be views of Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and Vienna.
Two works in the show, Europa I (seen below) and Europa II, present a montage of all the 27 European capitals furthering the concept of the European city as a member of a common unified dynamic community while at the same time a place for both personal independence and national identity. The construction of these complex works will be featured in two videos by the artist.
Miguel Angel Garcia was born in Madrid in 1952 and lives and works in Cantabria, Spain. He is a photographer and visual artist with training in economics and agricultural design. He has exhibited widely in Europe and in South America, with over thirty one-person and 15 group exhibitions within the past 8 years. His photographs have been presented at Paris Photo, Madrid Photo and the Hot Art Fair in Basel. This month he was one of 50 photographers to be selected from 2500 entries for the Syngenta Photography Award.
