Dario Escobar

Conceptual artist Dario Escobar’s large-scale installations made from sports equipment are not purely about play: Escobar uses these popular recreational objects to look at Guatamala’s history and culture in a global context. In this vein, Escobar’s work famously uses common and mass-produced materials (like motor oil, bicycle tires, or soccer balls) in conjunction with traditional Guatemalan artisanal techniques and mythological references. Escobar modifies and shapes these found objects and artifacts of material culture into abstract forms that belong to two time periods simultaneously, as in his “Quetzalcoatl” pieces (2003) that turned steel and vulcanized rubber into primordial biomorphic forms.