13 Mar 2015

Jorge Macchi / Spectrum at Le 19, Centre régional d'art contemporain

A key figure in the international contemporary art scene, Jorge MACCHI has, for over 25 years now, been honing a rigorous and poetic body of work.
His output blends formal components with haiku-like visuals. It stands at the crossroads of issues that interweave images stemming from a condensation or gushing of reality, from an interplay of shadows and lights, from sequential dynamics, and from repetition effects that serve to suspend or invert perceptive or signifying effects. It probes the emergence and dissolution of plot in situations beyond the borders of narrative.
He is adept in the art of toppling perceptions and thereby blurs our habitual view of reality. Such modifications of space situate him in the domain of fiction both for its illusionist aspect and for what this implies regarding a gap between dream and reality. Jorge Macchi corrodes our present through the intrusion into the present of elements from the past or from a fictive future that strip us of our familiar criteria linked to chronological linearity. Macchi's artworks often end up producing a suspense that destabilizes the identity of things, rendering the image uncertain and unsettling. He turns the world into a theater of doubt and melancholy. Crime lurks near the scenes he depicts, but the story is missing. We are either before or after the plot. This also explains his use of image-fragments or film-fragments as fuel for his visual collages, or which he transforms via alteration, separation or disconnection between text and images, between sound and dialogues. Images, reality, cityscape, consumer society signs and art history are the materials that he configures, associates or juxtaposes by setting up collision or shifting effects which cast doubt upon the identity of beings, situations and objects.
His output, in addition to drawings, paintings and sculptures, also comprises sound and video installations. Le 19, CRAC, which had initially displayed some of his works in 2001, is now hosting his first major exhibition in France. Jorge Macchi has perfected the art of taking utterly banal and anonymous things, images and words, and making them enigmatic and paradoxical.

Spectrum alludes to the nature of an exhibition that spans the artist's output for over twenty years. In addition, it evokes a constant in Jorge Macchi's work: the tendency of reality to unravel, the simultaneously ontological and fictive character of ubiquitous signs, and the way in which he treats shadow as the specter of form, the sign of its dissolution. Just as specters can evoke a reality and beings that have disappeared, his work constantly pursues a logic whereby the consistency of things is lost and their quality inverted; their existence and features have a propensity for becoming equivocal, hovering between the tangible and the diaphanous, between weightiness and immateriality, between reality and fiction.

Spectrum will be the first Jorge Macchi retrospective to take place in France. It will provide the French public with an opportunity to view an ensemble of the artist's major works (videos, paintings, installations, sculptures, and works on paper). This selection encompasses roughly twenty years of output, ranging from works created in 1992 (La flecha de Zenon) all the way to paintings from the series Memoria externa (2013-2014), which have not yet been shown in Europe.
Recent large-scale video works, such as From Here to Eternity and Second will be shown alongside earlier video works such as Victima Serial, Diario Intimo, Streamline, Super 8 and La flecha de Zenon.
Four of the artist's reference sculptures/installations will be presented (Refraction, Illumination, Pendulum and Bed and Breakfast) as well as two works deriving from the wall installations Hotel and Horizon. Drawings and collages such as Liliput, Shy, a relief from 2001 entitled Publicidades and a set of watercolors from 1990-2000 will supply the finishing touches.

Pursuing a different approach, Spectrum follows on the heels of the artist's recent retrospectives in Europe, Music Stands Still at the SMAK in Ghent (2011) and Container at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne (2013).
This exhibition has been organized with the support of the Peter Kilchmann Gallery (Zurich), the Galleria Continua (San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins), the Ruth Benzacar Gallery (Buenos Aires) and the Alexander and Bonin Gallery (New York).


Jorge Macchi is born in 1963 in Buenos Aires where he lives and works.

Participation important international events : Biennals of Sydney (2012), Liverpool (2012), Lyon (2011), Istanbul (2011 and 2003), Venice (2005), Prague (2005), Mercosur-Porto Alegre (2003), La Havane (2000) and Cuenca (1991).


Recent personal exhibitions : Mercosur (2007) and Venice (2005), Buenos aires, Mexico, Santiago de Chile museums, Austin Museum (USA), Ghent and Antwerp museums (Belgium) and Luzern (Switzerland), Museum and Bremen Kunstlerhaus (Germany) and Ruth Benzacar gallery (2014-2007), galeria Continua (2014-2009), Peter Kilchmann gallery (2012-2006) and Luisa Strina gallery (2007).

Important group shows in museums and art centers : Museum of contemporary art in Lima, Pinacoteca and Museum of modern art in São-Paulo, Museum of modern art, National Museum of fines arts and Museum of Latin American art in Buenos Aires, Drawing Center in New York, Tenerife art space in Canary islands, Drawing Room in London, Museum of Latin American art of California, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Dallas Museum for the Usa, Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Morsbroich Museum in Leverkusen (Germany), Palazzo de Arti in Naples, the Museum of art in Victoria (Spain), the Kunsthalle in Vienna and in the Irish Museum of Modern Art of Dublin.

In France, his first exhibition was L'atelier de Buenos Aires (1991), the Credac (Ivry sur seine). He had several personal exhibitions : Le 19, Crac in Montbéliard (2001), National School of Decorative Arts in Aubusson (2002) and participed to collective exhibitions at Le 19, Crac in Montbéliard (2007), Kunsthalle of Mulhouse (2010), Swiss Cultural Center (2011), Fondation Cartier (2013) and Xippas gallery (2014 -10) in Paris.
Jorge Macchi's works are in important public and private collections and among others : M.N.B.A, M.A.L.B.A and M.A.M. in Buenos Aires, M.O.M.A, Museo del Barrio in New York, Daros Fondation in Zurich, Tate Modern in London, M.UH.K.A in Antwerp, S.M.A.K in Ghent (Belgium), M.U.S.A.C in Leon (Spain) and M.N.A.M- Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Jorge Macchi is represented by Ruth Benzacar gallery (Buenos Aires), galeria Continua (San Gimingano, Bejiin, Les Moulins), Peter Kilchmann gallery (Zurich) and Luisa Strina gallery (Sao Paulo).