Javier Bassi
Bio
JAVIER BASSI | Montevideo, 1964. Lives and works in Montevideo.
He studied with Pierre Fossey (1976), José Montes (1984), at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of the Republic (1985-1992), and at the National School of Fine Arts (1997) in Montevideo. In 1993, he traveled to Mexico, the United States, Europe, and North Africa, and received a scholarship from the United States Program in New York and Boston. In New York, he reconnected with Gonzalo Fonseca. In 1995, he was invited to a workshop with Rubens Gerchman. In 1996, he received the Prix Paul Cézanne from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked at the Atelier Alraune in Rezé, with support from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. From France, he moved to New York and created monumental paintings and objects at the José Morales Studio in Manhattan, where he returned in 2000 and 2004. He participated in group projects and residencies in Amsterdam, Nantes, New York, Cuenca, and Montevideo. Since 1990, he has exhibited 27 solo shows and more than 160 group exhibitions in 30 countries. He represented Uruguay at the 5th International Painting Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador; the 1st Mercosur Visual Arts Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; the 7th Havana Biennial, Cuba; and the 2nd International Biennial of Montevideo. He received the most prestigious art awards in his country, including: First Prizes at the VI National Exhibition of Young Artists (1994), the Prix Paul Cézanne (1996), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Salon (1997), the Municipal Salon (1998), the 50th National Salon (2002), and the Bicentennial Mural Competition (2011); and Grand Prizes at the BROU Centennial Salon (1996), the I Mosca Biennial (1999), and the VIII Salto Biennial (2000). He was invited to inaugurate the MUVA (University Museum of Valladolid) with a permanent solo exhibition alongside works by Pedro Figari (1997). He received the Niveau Award at the III Mail Art Biennale in Debrecen, Hungary (2010) and the FEFCA Creation Fund from the National Directorate of Culture of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Montevideo (2012-2014).
Among her most recent exhibitions are those at the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum in Montevideo, the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., the Archaeological Museum of Cartagena, Spain, SP-Arte with Galería das Misiones in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Science Museum of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.
Her work encompasses paintings, objects, installations, sound experiments, urban interventions, artist's books, texts, and various activities related to contemporary art and thought. Her work is part of the collections of numerous museums and private collections, including the Inter-American Development Bank's Institutional Collection and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the SKD | Kupferstich-Kabinett Museum in Dresden, Germany; the FluxMuseum in Texas; and, in Uruguay, the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum and the National Museum of Visual Arts.
Statement
Javier Bassi's work, developed over decades through academic studies and periods of residence in various countries, is characterized by a rigorous investigation into the relationship between form, silence, and thought. Through an extreme chromatic reduction, where black stands out against white or yellow surfaces, his works shift attention to the materiality of the support and the spatial organization. The use of black on light surfaces creates structures in which the dark pigment recedes, and the resulting gray we perceive does not arise from a mixture of colors, but from an optical effect produced by the relationship between the black pattern, the support, and the viewing distance. In this interplay between presence and absence, the work becomes a field of tension between order and chance, memory and experience.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
