Manuel García

To understand Una copa más by Manuel García, it must be considered part of a project that the artist has been working on for years, and which has a history, at least, since 2021. That year, García presented his "Cultural Workers" in the gallery tapatía 2.1, in the exhibition «Suddenly I am here». There, links were established between the fans —he, as the most fervent of them— and his team support rags —blankets and banners—, as images of the tactics— of motto, guerrilla and demonstration—in the soccer ring and politics. One of the questions that were raised in the last exhibition was, precisely, what was there a reiterated message and what was an ephemeral performance, gestures and refrains, in the pilgrimage (ritual) of the fans to the sports ceremony. The x-ray of sport, through the lens of animation groups, like gangs that get together for the 90-minute slogan, like thieves of rivals' flags — if they are hooligans, to death — or as solipsists sublimated in their particular Sunday, they have in the new exhibition at Casa Mucha another phase of this artistic project by García, a project that, by the way, owes so much to mimesis, but on the side of trying to deceive it. It may be that the turn in "One more drink" is labor, but in the corporate and, perhaps, proto-bureaucratic sense. The proposal is, once again, ceremonial and cumulative: A party between union and Mexican, Argentine fans or any Ibero-American barra brava (but not from other parts of the world). In addition, the transition from the show — and the intoxication — to its formalisms, is reflected in the assembly — sober, because it is schematic — of a module where we can join the Obreros de la Cultura Fútbol Club — a team that is no longer fictitious, since This exhibition is his birth certificate: Badges, commemorative shirts and other objects from a fan kit/cooperative owner of the nascent club are distributed. Thus, García displays for us the future promise of having a sports team, in some of the amateur or professional divisions that survive the Mexican post-apocalypse. A hypothetical OCFC recreated by past trophies from competitions that have never been played (future memories?) and with a present fan base—including myself—who will strive not to be merely party-goers as an excuse for an exhibition. The background of these translations is the plagiarism of a real archive (1972-1976), that of Santos de Mexicaltzingo, a team that still exists and where relatives of Manuel García played, to whom the artist, time and time again, never tires to pay homage, with the insistence of a false orphan who sang to his team in the empty stands.

— Casa Mucha