Shauna McCabe
The constructions of José Luis Torres evoke the prolonged ambiguity and estrangement inherent in experiences of immigration and exile. Repurposing found materials, the Quebec-based Argentinian artist transforms spaces with large-scale installations that offer possibilities to both see and engage familiar objects in new ways. Collecting and recontextualizing objects of daily life, his DIY architectures point less to home than to informal settlements, where sedentary spaces of stability associated with belonging give way to nomadic spaces of risk and vulnerability. For Torres, this geography of temporary territories offers insight into deterritorialization – the deep transformation of everyday cultural experiences compelled by the dislocation and relocation associated with cross-border movement and migration at both local and global scales.
Integrating aged and discarded furniture – doors, windows, mirrors, and chairs – sourced within the community to preserve their association with local ways of life, Torres uses strategies of reconstruction and assimilation deeply familiar to im/migrants as they shape and are reshaped by new territories. The very simple gesture of “making do” that informs the construction of this built environment belies the profound precariousness of relationships to home, to identity, and to bearings produced by immigration, as well as the essentially ephemeral intersections of object and human biographies through time and change.
Image detail: José Luis Torres, Temporary Territories (installation view), 2023, found furniture
Organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Partnership support from Circle Home Furniture Bank, an initiative of Danby Appliances, and ReStore, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity.
About the artist
José Luis Torres
Born in Argentina, José Luis Torres has lived and worked in Quebec since 2003. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts, a Master’s degree in sculpture, as well as training in architecture and in the integration of arts into architecture. His works have been the subject of numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Recently, his works have been seen in various festivals and major cultural events, including the Festival international de jardins of the Jardins de Métis, the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, at the Symposium d’art contemporain in Baie-Saint-Paul, at the Art in the Open Festival in Charlottetown and at the Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier, France, as well as at international biennials in Europe and Asia. In 2019, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec awarded him the CALQ Prize – Work of the Year in Chaudière-Appalaches, and, in 2021, he was awarded the title of Personnalité Arts et Culture by the organization Culture Capitale-Nationale et Chaudière-Appalaches.
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
January 18.2024 / April 21.2024
The Unsettlements is a series of projects initiated by JD Pluecker in 2018 that delve into sites of memory, silence, and ancestry, particularly in Houston and across what is now called Texas
exhibition
Tim Pitsiulak
January 18.2024 / May 12.2024
Tim Pitsiulak’s work offers profound insight into not just life in the North, but the ever-evolving impacts of colonization, particularly the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation.
exhibition
September 21.2023 / December 30.2023
This group exhibition that explores various rituals related to the everyday and the natural environment through art by those who hold cultural ties to the Caribbean.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
The Third Scenario examines the act of art making through hyphenated conditions and what it means to create while being Asian and living in Canada.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
This exhibition of works by Manitoulin Island-based artist Carl Beam probes the interstices of history, politics, science, materiality, and Indigeneity.
exhibition
September 14.2023 / December 17.2023
Seeing the Land, Feeling the Sea presents landscapes by Canadian artist Takao Tanabe from AGG’s permanent collection.
exhibition
July 14.2023 / September 3.2023
This exhibition highlights Grande’s distinct visual lexicon culled from her experiences as well as cultural sources – symbolic references that coalesce in surreal, painterly compositions.
exhibition
May 25.2023 / September 10.2023
Incorporating elements of local lore as well as the evolving built landscape, Norlen’s large-scale drawings explore the effects of time and the play of memory and imagination that results.