Dora Garcia
About the Artist
García is born in Valladolid, Spain, in 1965, she lives and works in Oslo. The artist often works with film, performance, and theater. Her research focuses on contemporary history, ethics, and politics. García represented Spain at the 54th Venice Biennial in 2011.
The Locked Room
Ed. of 3 + 1 A.P.
2002-2025
Installation consisting of a closed space, a door that gives access to it, locked, a key that locks it, and a vinyl text
With Dora Garcia’s work The Locked Room we are confronted with a locked exhibition room of the Foundation, whose key is guarded by the artist herself. A text outside the room informs us that access is denied to prevent the work from disappearing. The collector then agrees to buy an idea, a Denkraum, a mental space, which the artist shares on the basis of an agreement, an essential part of the work. The collector sacrifices a part of the physical, architectural space of his or her collection, which is removed from view, but functions, by contrast, as a space of mental openness, where, through blind trust and placid abandonment, artist and amateur meet, to bring to life together an idea of art, a worldview (Weltanschauung).
«With The Locked Room, I want to construct a space that cannot be accessed. To build a space that, through compromise and agreement, exists only in your mind. [...] The room is a mental space. It is the result of subtraction rather than addition, as is usually the case with artworks. The artist appropriates a part of the house or institution where the artwork is on display. It is the opposite of a normal transaction in the process of art acquisition: when collectors buy an artwork, they add something to their possessions; here, paradoxically, they subtract something. In The Locked Room, collectors deny access to a part of their own home, their own space, and relinquish it to the artist, who, as part of the agreement, receives the key to the locked door.»