Mario García Torres

García Torres proffers an audiovisual piece, created especially for the occasion, which is a succession of images with a male “voice-over” recounting a largely unknown chapter in the career of the Italian Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994). In ¿Alguna vez has visto la nieve caer? (2009) García Torres narrates his desire to uncover the truth behind the events surrounding a business run by Alighiero Boetti in the Afghan capital during the Seventies, the mythical One Hotel in Kabul. The work, a literary film piece that is both documentary and fiction, is narrated by the artist and addresses political and historiographic matters. In short, the piece looks at the story of two artists, one active in the Seventies (Boetti) and the other today (García Torres).

The controlled emotion in the piece is procured through the intimate connection the narrator establishes with the listener and viewer, a tone that imbues the piece with serenity, description and neutrality. ¿Alguna vez has visto la nieve caer? is also a work about observation, a journey to recapture the experience of photography.

The exhibition is concluded with a series of fictitious faxes ( Share-E-Nau Wonderings-A Film Treatment, 2006) that García Torres sent to Boetti from Kabul in 2001, where supposedly he would have gone in search of One Hotel just after September 11 ^th in New York.

García Torres' work has also been exhibited at the 52 ^nd Venice Biennial in 2007; the 8 ^th Panama Art Biennial, Panama, 2008; the Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama, Japan, 2008 and in other museums such as: the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2008; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, 2008; the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2004, 2005 and 2007; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2009; Tate Modern, London, 2007 and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2007.