Miguel Angel García

Independencias represents the first United States one-man show by Spanish artist Miguel Ángel García.

These ten large-scale color photographs, selected from the series Independencias, produced between 2009 and 2012, are based on panoramic photographs taken by García from culturally symbolic watchtowers that overlook the 27 capitals of the European Union - the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Acropolis in Athens, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.  Garcia then digitally paints the images, initially blanketing them in white, as if seen through a veil of snow, which gives all the cities a unified appearance.  This is followed by the selective red highlighting of repeating infrastructural details, such as smoke stacks in Paris, skylights in Berlin and London, chimneys in Vienna and Stockholm.  This combined intervention highlights the contradictions between individualism, national identity, and the larger membership in a political union of many nations and cultures.  The final prints act as a sort of x-ray of the in-dependencies within all the European capitals.

Two works in the show, Europa I and Europa II, present a montage of all the 27 European capitals, furthering the concept of the European city as a member of a common unified dynamic community, while at the same time a place for both personal independence and national identity. The construction of these complex works is featured in two videos by the artist.