Barthélémy Garcia has recently created an association called Värmeelementens Förbund --The Radiator Association -- as a platform for his artistic practice. Värmeelementens Förbund is coming for the first time to the US where it will invite the local communities of Oakland to explore the possibilities such associations can offer through city walks and conversations.
Hosted by Common Knowledge Platform, Pro Arts’s international artist residency in Oakland, the Association will take on the task of examining our material environment and its impact in our lives. The Association is a symbol, and the radiator stands for the most banal material things that together form our living environment.
Decisions about our living environments are made in spaces that are not usually considered as “political,” where material things are playing a crucial role. How can the issue of inequality be resolved without taking material things into account?
Garcia’s interest lays in material things and this is also what will be at the center of The Radiator Association’s inquiry. His residency will run from September 25 until October 15, 2023 with a public program and opening for the project, scheduled for First Friday in October (October 6th 2023) at Pro Arts, now at Omni Commons, Oakland, CA.
CKP is a residency for an open knowledge production and exchange in the form of peer-to-peer artist collaborations, commissioned projects in research and print, and collective action through the medium of art and law that embody community ethos and philosophy. the international residency puts artists and cultural organizers at the center of artistic and cultural knowledge production, and as the main instigators of civic and community empowerment.
Garcia is a is a French born artist based in Sweden, working with photography combined with installation and vinyl text. In his practice, he starts from the idea of the material as something inherently meaningful. He believes that things possess an independent existence that extends beyond what we humans ascribe to them. He holds a bachelor degree and master degree in photography from Valand Academy (Sweden) and previously studied art history and archaeology in Aix-en-Provence (France). His work has been exhibited at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg, Galleri Format in Malmö, at FG2 in Gothenburg and most recently at Duo Contradiction in Stockholm. In 2020 he was awarded the Swedish Arts Grants Committees assistant grant, together with Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, and in 2022 he was awarded the IASPIS residency in Stockholm, Sweden.