Darío Escobar

Born in 1971 in Guatemala. Lives and works between Mexico City and Guatemala City.

Originally trained as an architect, Darío Escobar has developed, since the late 1990s, an artistic practice centered on the formal and conceptual investigation of the object, its insertion into the field of visual arts, and its relationship to art history. His work continuously questions some of the fundamental dynamics of contemporary life: the construction of identities through consumption, the tension between popular and high culture, and the impact of economic and social systems on everyday experience.

Through the appropriation and transformation of industrial objects and mass-produced consumer goods — such as McDonald’s cups, cereal boxes, tires, soccer balls, and automobile bumpers — Escobar constructs a sculptural language that places contemporary material culture in dialogue with the history of Western art. His works explore the dynamics of desire, the circulation of images and commodities, and the ways in which objects shape our perception of both the world around us and ourselves.

His work has been presented in major solo and group exhibitions at international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile (MAC); the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia; the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno Carlos Mérida, Guatemala City; and the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, among others.

In addition, his work is held in important public and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH); the Centre Pompidou Foundation, Paris; Museo Jumex, Mexico; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Taguchi Art Collection, Tokyo; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA); the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina; the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, among others.