Bio
Jason Garcia is an American muralist and interdisciplinary studio artist based in Detroit making work about the construction of cultural symbols and patterns. Paintings and sculptures contemplate moments of perpetually defining our environment and choosing what it means to be alive in it as a result of attempting to survey the human behavior of declarative ideation. Garcia’s work offers to serve as reference or type of observational documentation for potentially mapping and navigating a part of our communally manufactured narrative. Simply put, the work is just the visual outcome of foundational inquiries resulting from the earnest pursuit of attempting to understand what it means to be human and what that can potentially look like. Consequently, he has created work for national and international partnerships with multiple organizations including the Social Public Art Resource Center, Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, Rainforest Action Network, Playing For Change, Project Ahimsa, University of Colorado Art Museum, Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, Conscious Alliance, Color Outside The Lines, Smithsonian Sikh Heritage Foundation, the NFL and Fox. Fundamental to his process, Garcia champions advocacy and authentic connection to community by being a devoted resource.
Artist Statement
Everyone that has ever existed defines the space around them, a developmental creative process that more often than not is taken for granted. Humanity assigns meaning to all objects and circumstances. Through the actions of observation and translation that meaning is initially founded and, ultimately, filtered through the autobiographical experience. Confident of our empire over this world, historically, wars are waged, religions are founded, lovers embrace, civilizations are created and ecosystems destroyed all because of that given meaning. That fabricated understanding creates a universe within that habitually seeks affirmation through repetition. Generational patterns appear. Relational connections are forged. A story is told.
Although, it is tempting for me to tell a story that suggests the work holds some overarching transformative space where “the other” dissolves, separation becomes an illusion, distances between multiple points are erased and all becomes clearly connected in omnipotent union, there is no romanticized grandiosity of self-proclaimed mysticism or universal alchemy presented here. The paintings and sculptures are merely objects, layered paint on a surface, gradations of materials organized and assembled in a space attempting to explore, document and record moments within the process of storytelling. Pragmatically speaking, the paintings and sculptures are only the results of my endeavor to try to make some sort of sense of what it means to be human in our world, reflections of the times, reflections of a story. Our story.
Contact
For inquiries into original, commission or special project acquisitions please email j@jasonalbertgarcia.com