Gabriel Garza
May 30 – July 13, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 30 | 5 to 8pm

An exhibition of works on aluminum by Gabriel Garza in /room/, juried by Aaron Harbour and Jackie Im.

List of Works | a poem by grace iyer | Sign Hill Walk Hike Talk Rite Tops Left

Malaprop Pablum is an exhibition of works on aluminum created between 2020 and 2021 by Gabriel Garza. The works act as signage. They use or re-arrange language from phrases inspired by motivational/inspirational texts as well as pamphlets, construction signs, and home-made business cards, often utilizing anagrammatic reconfiguration––a technique that relies on chance, but is also a somewhat rigid reconfiguration––to yield poetic and humorous results. By providing new context to signage vernacular, Garza aims to direct letters to become resounding. Rearranging and repurposing language, he draws attention to the way context defines words.

Gabriel Garza was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently resides in San Francisco. He produces signage that works to give functional encounters with language a sense of poetics. Pamphlets, construction signs, and homemade business cards display an amateur or practical design that he admires. He borrows from these aesthetics, embracing the limitations of commercial design and the poor quality of signage vernacular to make sculptures. He received his BA in Art from UCLA in 2017 and is joining the USC Roski MFA program this Fall.