Macchi Jorge: Natural History

Galeria Luisa Strina presents Jorge Macchi’s solo exhibition, Natural History. Macchi was born in Buenos Aires (1963), where he still lives and works.
A striking characteristic of his art is the diverse range of disciplines and media, displaying techniques that span from drawing, painting and watercolor, to text, sculpture, object, music, video, photography, collage, works with light, cut-outs, artist books, engraving, architecture, landscape design and installations.
The exhibition is structured around two large installations: ‘Aqui’ [Here] and ‘Projeção’ [Projection].

The former, ‘Aqui’, consists of a heavy iron cross that marks in the exhibition space the exact location of the gallery according to GPS coordinates and its direction according to the cardinal points. The apparent fragility and invisibility of the data and systems acquire in ‘Aqui’ materiality and weight.

‘Projeção’, the work at the center of the exhibition is a self-supporting wall, like those used in exhibitions to divide spaces. In this case, however, the wall is in an unbalanced, oblique position, held up by a series of 60 tie rods attached to a cement projector installed onto the ceiling. The immateriality of the light becomes graphic and is materialized through the tie rods that present a situation of attraction and rejection.

The work that lends its name to the show, Natural History, is a contemporary version of the baroque vanitas. However, the reference to fleetingness and emptiness here is contradictory on account of the structure and materialization of the shadows and, precisely because of the word History. It is a piece that has a two-step structure: an effect in the past and its consequences crystallized in the present.

‘Eingang’ is an oil painting on a large canvas that presents a violent contrast between support and pictorial content, and between depth and surface. This work draws on and develops an extensive series of paintings that Macchi has been producing since 2010, some of which were shown at this gallery in 2011.
Macchi has carried out four monographic exhibitions: Perspectiva, MALBA Museo de Arte Latino-Americana, Buenos Aires (Argentina, 2016); Espectrum, Le 19 CRAC Centre régional d’art contemporain, Montbéliard (France, 2015); Music Stands Still, SMAK Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (Belgium, 2011).
His other major solo exhibitions have included: Lampo, NC Arte, Bogotá (Colombia, 2015); Prestidigitador, MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (Mexico, 2014); Container, MAMBA Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (Argentina, 2013) and Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerna (Switzerland, 2013).