5 You Should Know

ektor garcia:

loose ends

San José Museum of Art 

Ongoing – June 7, 2026

Perhaps you’re thinking that San Jose is a bit too far to travel for an artist you may not know. If so, allow me just five minutes to change your mind.

First, you will not be bored. ektor garcia* is an internationally known and respected artist whose work has been featured on four continents. He fearlessly works in multiple mediums. You are sure to find something among the wide variety of his works that will move you.

Second, this October, the Style Magazine section of the venerable New York Times (often the final arbiter in the US art world) named ektor garcia first among the “Five Rising Contemporary Artists You Should Know.”

Last, ektor gracia may be the balm you need in these harsh and troubled times. His work subtly, but clearly, challenges gender roles, notions of static identity and hierarchies of labor, while incorporating Mexican handcraft traditions passed on by his grandmother. And he is not going away.

Rethinking the trip to San Jose? If it still seems like too much, I’ll let you in on an easter egg. garcia also has a show, right now in The City.

ektor garcia

nu.dos

Rebecca Camacho Gallery

San Francisco

Ongoing – November 2

nu.dos is a play on the Spanish word nudos, meaning knots. Phonetically separating this into two words, nu and dos, meaning “two new” or “new two,” expands the lexicon of garcia’s visual language by introducing previously unexplored materials such as paper raffia, hemp and house paint, while also reimagining past works.

The Camacho Gallery debuts garcia’s largest single crocheted copper work, crochet copper mandala. At 9 feet tall and 6 feet wide, the marquee piece dwarfs the viewer, a reversal of roles, the opposite of how we traditionally experience a typical, crocheted, household tabletop item. Magnified, the work creates a physical and all-encompassing response in the viewer.

Adviso: When you take into account the parking challenges (and the time to find a spot) in The City, getting to either location events out to just under an hour.

detail from garcia’s crochet copper mandala

San Jose

Beng optimistic, I’ll assume that I’ve convinced you to travel to the San José Museum of Art. If so, you will be treated to a far wider range of ektor garcia’s art in this first ever solo museum exhibition, here in his home state of California.

garcia was born in Red Bluff, to Mexican migrant workers. He spent his formative years in the Bay Area and Mexico before attending the Art Institute in Chicago. He now lives and works nomadically.

According to Artforum, garcia “makes work that speaks to the multiplicity and pain of queered experience. In his hands, materiality becomes a tongue; roles are subverted through process, latent potential unearthed simply enough through context and juxtaposition.”

Just a sampling of some of the ektor gracia works on view at the San José Museum of Art

His works evoke the human body, domestic items and natural or architectural forms, often including family heirlooms or artifacts – objects with a significant past, present and future. “garcia’s work is always evolving. His sculptures seem quiet but restless, psychologically and politically charged in their deceptive delicacy and susceptibility to change,” said Lauren Schell Dickens, SJMA’s chief curator.

You might have just one question left now: Who are the other four artists “you should know,” right?

Jimena Sarno

Modupeola Fadugba

Raphaele Cohen-Bacry

Djabril Boukhenaissi.

Check back to this Blog site regularly. We’ll explore these other artists as their works arrive in the Bay Area.

*garcia chooses to express his name in lower case letters in an homage to feminist writer and thinker, bell hooks.