Catalogue > At random

For “The Condor passes by” - in Spanish “El Condor Pasa”- the artist purchased a car: the mythical Condor GT (1981). This emblematic model fabricated in fiberglass during the transition from a military dictatorship to the restoration of democracy in Ecuador, is also part of the last days of the so-called “oil boom” in the country and the main focus of the proposal. Balseca recalls the nostalgic story of one of the last “national” cars and pays a posthumous tribute to that period of the local industry. The video shows us the last moments of the car before taking his “last flight”,when it is dropped from the top of a hill in the surroundings of the Mount Catequilla.

Adrián Balseca (Quito, Ecuador, 1989) lives and works in Quito. Balseca’s work aims to activate strategies of representation, narration, and/or interaction in order to highlight cultural specificities of a particular place. It explores the relationship and tensions between industrial and craft practices, revealing a fascination with the historic processes, and the configuration of materials involved in the production of manufactured goods. His work often involves transforming the composition of daily objects or certain civil laws into other material forms, or legal experiences. These projects —from small interventions to large-scale ‘site specific’ actions or video documentations— elaborate on ideas of emerging economies, nature, power, and social memory.