Jorge Macchi

Jorge Macchi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1963 and studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón. He began showing his work in 1986 together with El Grupo de la X at Benzacar Gallery when he was 23 years old, painting on paper and making objects  French materials he found in the neighborhood of La Boca. He later participated in a collective exhibition organized by Philippe Cyroulnik, L’atelier Buenos Aires, at CREDAC, in Ivry-Sur-Seine, France, together with Roberto Elía, Martín Reyna, and Pablo Suárez. He then began a long career of national and international scope. His work is one of the most significant examples of contemporary conceptual art.

Macchi creates visual fictions in multiple formats: drawings, videos, paintings, photographs, and installations. His works contain paradoxes; they attempt to trap memories and are expressed in absurdities or form deeply poetic images. A fan placed at the juncture of two walls, which it perforates when set in motion; a series of lamps that shine on a carpet and illuminate an erased drawing; a container thrust into a room where it doesn’t fit; a mirrored ball that appears to have exploded and which, instead of lights, projects holes onto the walls  . . . As well as constructions on top of maps, strange sounds, the questioning of time and space, and games of signs and opposites. The artist found a phrase that represents the spirit of his work in footnoted  instructions that the French composer Débussy left for the performer of a piece (Macchi is also a pianist): “As if it were the echo of the phrase heard earlier.”

From 1996-97 Macchi lived in Holland and England, and during that residence he began his work on the projection of shadow, which metamorphosed from a mathematical concept into a poetic one. He also started working with newspaper, as in the work Incidental Music (1998), in which he forms pentagrams using clippings from the crime section, or Moonblock (2003), in which he pokes holes in obituaries, making them resemble buildings.

In 1998 he decided to establish a base in his own city, despite the fact that his career was taking him far afield with greater frequency. Then came an invitation from the Fundación Antorchas to participate in the Taller de Experimentación Escénica (Scenic Experimentation Workshop), organized by Rubén Szuchmacher and Edgardo Rudnitzky, which put him in contact with visual artists, musicians, theater directors, and writers. There he became aware of fiction within art and of artistic collaboration. He worked as a theatrical designer till 2005.

He has had more than 25 solo exhibitions in spaces like the Galería Luisa Strina Gallery, São Paulo; Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; the Alexander and Bonin Gallery, New York; Instituto Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy; Kunstlerhaus Bremen, Germany; and Galería Mirta de Mare, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He has participated in biennial shows in Liverpool, Sydney, Lyon, Istanbul, New Orleans, Yokohama, Prague, Havana, Kathmandu, and Bienalsur, among others. In 2005 he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennial with a concerto for trampoline, La Ascensión, in collaboration with Rudnitzky. During the performance an acrobat leaped onto the trampoline, setting in motion a percussion of springs and bounces on the canvas; meanwhile, a musician played the viola da gamba in counterpoint. Music is often associated with his work, like an old love that always returns.

In 2007, Macchi presented a monographic exhibition, Anatomía da melancholia (Anatomy of Melancholy) at the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre. This was followed by Espectrum (Spectrum) at CRAC, Montbeliard, France (2015); Music Stands Still at the Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK) in Ghent, Belgium (2011); and Perspectiva (Perspective) at MALBA (2016). His works can be found in private and public collections, such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MALBA) and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA) in his native country; MoMA and El Museo del Barrio in New York; Fondation Daros in Zurich; the Tate Modern in London; Muhka in Antwerp; Musac in León, Spain; and the Musée Pompidou in Paris. Among other distinctions, he has been awarded the Banco de la Nación Argentina Prize (2000) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2001) for the project “Buenos Aires Tour.”