environmentalart

July 8 2020

Solo Show @ Art Kiosk

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Fung Collaboratives + Redwood City Improvement Association + Art Kiosk presents

Tara de la Garza
Monument to the Plastocene IV

Curated by Lance M. Fung June 12 – July 5, 2020

Between social justice and social distancing, Public Art can be an important forum at this time. On the Peninsula, we are lucky to have the Art Kiosk in Redwood City’s Courthouse Square. As quarantines are loosened, the Art Kiosk offers art installations for contemplation and connectivity in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Environmental justice and stewardship of the planet are central to de la Garza’s art practice. She reveals the stories embedded in our collective consumption, specifically of single use plastic. She delves into the archaeology of contemporary waste materials. “The work become time capsules, little stories of our consumption.” She hopes to elevate plastic as a medium.

Her minimalist forms contain a maximalist aesthetic of excess. Textures fashioned from the detritus of our community and molding into concrete cylinders and lights. Influenced by minimalist and constructivist artists such as Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Vladmir Tatlin, and contemporary artists Rachel Whiteread and Eva Rothschild, de la Garza’s ‘Monumental’ projects continue a practice of reusing materials and referencing modernist forms.

September 18 2019

San Francisco Design Week

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Exhibited at SF Design Week, the Design Hub 2019

Monuments to the Plastocene

Monument # 1 Anarchy in the HDPE

In this first installation in her series Monuments to the Plastocene, Tara de la Garza simulates the warp and the weft of a tartan pattern with her light tubes. Tartan, in the punk era, became a symbol of anti-establishment. de la Garza is using it here to protest throw-away culture and our ever increasing packaged life, protesting the lie we were told that plastic is recycled. Here, she wants to elevate plastic as a medium, collect it, treasure it.

de la Garza also plays with the historical significance of the grid, as pioneered by Sol Lewitt and Dan Flavin. The pattern is structured but not in a utopian, modernist sense,. Here, the criss-crossed horizontal and vertical light tubes create chaotic patterns that can only be understood at multiple vantage points. Colored gels layered around these lights, on close inspection, are the discarded plastic bags that tell our stories of consumption.