Opening Reception for Alejandro García Contreras and Le’Andra LeSeur

Join Pioneer Works in a public opening celebration of Alejandro García Contreras: ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? and Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal.

¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?, or Who hasn't tried to turn a stone into a memory?, marks the first institutional solo exhibition by Alejandro García Contreras. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, the artist is best known for elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate interests that range widely, from popular culture and eroticism, to global art history and the occult. Inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, the exhibition blends his ceramic practice with earlier interests in concrete pouring, photography, and experimental video. Comprising a multimedia installation, the exhibition explores the dichotomy between the ephemerality of human beings and the material objects that they leave behind.

In Monument Eternal, artist Le'Andra LeSeur dissects the ways that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. Comprising a new series of work co-commissioned with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the exhibition contemplates how this alteration manifests in the physical body, especially when presented with, and situated in, the sonic rhythms that reverberate across these sites of violence. At the center of this project is a titular video filmed in, and inspired by, Stone Mountain in Georgia—a public park distinguished by a three-acre-wide carving that depicts Confederate leaders. A poetic translation of the body in collapse, the work stitches together slow-motion captures of the artist falling, unabated and repeatedly, on the mountain’s peak.

Alejandro Garcia Contreras: ¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? and Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.