A Singular Plurality

One of the most significant Central American artists to be recognized in the contemporary international scene in recent years, Guatemalan sculptor Dario Escobar has captivated audiences with his provocative work, as intense in its format and conceptual inquiry as it is irreverent in its novelty and humor. Escobar first gained recognition for his clever appropriation of everyday objects gilded in the manner of the Guatemalan baroque. He has since distinguished himself as an artist not only through this shrewd conflation of high- and low-brow culture, but, most critically, through his relentless artistic investigation of what it means, as a Guatemalan, to be "contemporary." Whether through a strategic accumulation of seemingly ordinary objects, or their delicate re-contextualization in the gallery space, Escobar continually challenges us to reconsider our relation to the myriad of mass-produced objects that encroach on our daily experience and to reflect on our own place in the social, political, and economic systems that sustain this existence. In A Singular Plurality, essays by important international scholars, critics, and curators provide a critical account of how Escobar's irresistibly whimsical incisiveness effectively dismantled the hardened opposition between the cosmopolitan and the local, thus setting the stage for our present global cartography.