The Ephemeral Island of Motorama

Chelsea, New York: 532 Jäckel presents The Ephemeral Island of Motorama, an exhibition of recent sculptures, and mixed-media works by Mexican-born artist Paco Marcial. The Ephemeral Island of Motorama opens on May 2nd, 2024 and runs through June 8th, 2024. This is Marcial’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. 

The works of Paco Marcial linger somewhere between fanfiction and a love affair. His chosen theme, which he returns to again and again with (in his words) a passion “verging on oneiric romanticism,” is motorsports racing. But this romanticized obsession with racing, with cars and their sheer potential for brutality, beauty, precarity, and speed is not wholly about fantasy so much as analogy. Marcial finds significant correspondences between the mechanics of racing and the love of art; between motor racing and art as archetypal moments that can define an entire life, career, or creative passion.  

Marcial calls attention not only to the fragility of human relationship to the rush of speed and metal, but to the iconicity of the technologies that have surrounded the sport for decades. In the words of German racing driver Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips: “That we race cannot be explained by the necessity of sports for industry, but by the indefinite urge in men to compete and succeed in doing perilous things. Things that really serve no purpose, but still require the entire dedication and force of his personality.” Simply replace the words “race” or “sports” with art, artist, painting, or sculpture, and you’ll see how competitive sports overlap with the search for beauty. 

The crux of The Ephemeral Island of Motorama lies in its allusions to the career of German-born racing driver Jochen Rindt. During the summer of 1970, somewhere near Begnins at Lake Geneva, a TV crew interviewed  Rindt—winner of four Grand Prix races that season. He was the foremost contender for the championship, and the interview took place at his home. Towards the end of the interview, with cameras and microphones pointing at both of them, Jochen asks his wife Nina (seated beside him the entire time): If she could wish for anything, what would she wish? Nina replied: That you stop racing. By the end of the summer, during a practice session for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, Rindt suffered a fatal crash, dying en route to the hospital. He went on to become the only driver posthumously awarded the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote that a single, precise moment can define a whole life. This defining moment applies equally to Marcial’s translations of racing into art. Muted colors, graphic design styles, and references to now hard-to-come-by tech (landlines, anyone?) fill the rooms of Marcial’s works like magic mirrors. We see ourselves in them, but in a way where our past and our future have collapsed in on themselves. The image reflected back to us shows us what remains constant as much as what is intrinsically ephemeral. The absurdity of time, whose  passage binds the nonexistent future and the nonexistent present to an everlasting present, connects The Ephemeral Island of Motorama with events that occurred more than fifty years ago. This absurdity is then reframed by way of paradox—with Marcial’s search for sculptural metaphors which recreate in their own right a single defining moment. 

For further information or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact 532 Jäckel by e-mail at info@532gallery.com