Alejandro Thornton
Bio
ALEJANDRO THORNTON
(Buenos Aires, 1970)
Holds a degree in Visual Arts and is a professor and researcher in the Department of Visual Arts at the National University of the Arts (UNA). He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Residencies: Kansas City Artist Coalition (Kansas City, 2014); Kosmos Kulltur Stiftung (Berlin/Lucerne, 2015); Escena Oceánica Art Lab (Uruguay, 2024).
Awards (selection): Winner of the Paqui J. Yepes International Visual Poetry Prize (Spain, 2022); AAVRA Lifetime Achievement Award, Visual Artists Association of the Argentine Republic (2020); 2nd Prize, Céfiro Photography Acquisition (2019); 1st Prize, Video Art Category, Bahía Blanca National Biennial 2013, MACBB; 3rd Prize, UADE National Visual Arts Prize (2013).
Selected Solo Exhibitions: “Black Days,” AMIA Art Space (2025); “HBLM/TLKM,” Pabellon4 (2023); “Happening on Strike,” Pabellon4 (2019); “AbstractA,” Pabellon4 (2017); “Traverse,” Artemisa Gallery (New York, 2016); “International Monkey Business,” Schauraum (Lucerne, 2015); “I Write / I Draw,” Charno Gallery (Kansas City, 2014); “Overwritten,” Mock Gallery (2013).
Selected Group Exhibitions:
“I Remember” Art & Memory 31 Years After the AMIA Bombing, Recoleta Cultural Center (2025); “The Future Behind: Political Imagination After the Explosion,” Memory Park (2024). POSVERSO, 1st International Biennial of Experimental Poetry Argentina (2024); “Poets with a video camera. Videopoetry 1980-2020”, Surrey Art Gallery (Canada, 2022); National Salon of Visual Arts (ed. 2015/2017/2023); 98th Annual National Salon of Santa Fe; MACSur Visual Arts Prize (Ed. 21/22); “Artivism”, Art-focus Latin America (USA, Mexico, Buenos Aires); “Space to dream: Recent Art from South America” Auckland Art Gallery (New Zealand, 2016); “Oblique Poetics. Modes of Counter-Writing and Phonetic Torsions in Experimental Poetry (1956-2016),” OSDE Foundation; “The Hidden Gaze,” Rolf; “Epistolary: Dialogues with the Collection,” Castagnino Museum +Macro; UADE National Painting Prize (ed. 06/07/08/09/11/13/20).
Video-art Festivals:
9th NodoCCS International Video Festival (Caracas, 2023); 35th Les Instants Video Festival (Marseille, 2022); Artists' Film Series, DOC Buenos Aires + OSDE Foundation (2020); File SP 2018, International Festival of Electronic Languages (São Paulo, 2018); Film and Video Poetry Symposium (Los Angeles, 2018); MultiPoeticoFest 2018 (Spain, 2018); Open Fields Short Film Festival (Australia, 2017), Short Film Roosendaal Festival (Netherlands, 2017), SFFF 2017 (Sarajevo); 13th Athens Digital Art Festival ADAF (Greece, 2017); Festival Samples (Mexico, 2016); Fonlad Digital Arts Festival (Lisbon, 2015).
Books: Free Poems (2022), AquiahoraotravoZ in collaboration with Josep Calleja (2021), Portraits of Solitude (2020), Abracadabra (2017), 15 Political Poems (2016), Instant Poems (2014), Epistolary (2013, Castagnimo / MACRO), Graphic Problems (2008), Visual Poetry (2007)
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Statement
Alejandro Thornton: The Writing of Origin (Theme: Language as an Interstitial Element)
In Alejandro Thornton's work, the coca leaf sheds its organic materiality to become text, sign, and presence. For this edition, his works are presented as totemic sculptures in stainless steel, standing in the gallery like gods to be worshipped, granting three-dimensionality and an eternal brilliance to his visual poetics. Thornton transcends the flat surface: through the construction of these forms, language acquires a physical and sacred body. The artist operates, starting from a mother sign, as a transcriber of silences, where each piece acts as a score of ancestral memory under the hardness and reflection of the metal.
Daniel Fischer 2025
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
