Matías Duville (Buenos Aires, 1974) works with objects, videos and installations, although his production has mainly grown out of drawing. His works evoke scenes of desolation with rarified, timeless atmospheres like those that precede a natural disaster: hurricanes, tsunamis or scenes of abandonment in a forest that represent a dreamlike vision of a wandering explorer, like a mental landscape. As a reference figure in local drawing, Duville’s work is characterised by experimentation with different mediums and materials. With his expressive strokes and procedures which reveal certain brutality, he modifies the surface by leaving traces in the representation, marks which blend the nature of matter with the landscape. The tension between opposites, mutation and time are some of the subjects that feature in his most recent works.
His most recent projects include Hotel Palmera curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro (Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, Buenos Aires, 2020) Desert means ocean (MOLAA, Los Angeles, 2019), Projection Soul (Luisa Strina, São Paulo, 2019), Romance atómico (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2017), The Valise Project (MoMA, New York, 2017), Arena Parking (Art Basel, Miami, 2016; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 2015), Mutações (MAM, Rio de Janeiro, 2015), Precipitar una especie, (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2014), Discard Geography (Ecole de Beaux Arts, Chapelle des Petits-Augustins, Paris, 2013), Safari (Malba, 2013) and Alaska, (Drawing Center, New York, 2013).Matías Duville’s works are part of many important collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Tate Modern of London, Centro de Arte Reina Sofìa in Madrid, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Los Angeles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in New York; Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) in Perú; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano (Malba) in Buenos Aires, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (Castagnino+macro) in Santa Fé. In 2016, Duville was part of the scholarship InclusArtis curated by Pablo León de la Barra (Río de Janeiro, 2018), LARA (Latin America Roaming Art, Galápagos, 2016), Sam Art Project (Paris, 2013), among others. He lives and works in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata.
Through his works, Duville invites viewers on a journey through desolate landscapes, imbued with rarefied and eternal atmospheres that seem to herald natural cataclysms or scenes of vital abandonment that suggest the dreamlike exploration of an absent observer. In his most recent works, themes such as duality, transformation, and the passage of time take center stage.
Precipitar una especie (Barro, 2014)
Santiago García Navarro, “Extracción del vacío”, Rio de Janeiro, 2012. Text accompanying the exhibition Safari, Malba.
Sonia Becce, “Whistle”, Buenos Aires, 2011. Interview on the occasion of the exhibition Whistle. Galería Nueveochenta, Bogota, Colombia.
María Gainza, “¿Dr. Duville, supongo?”, Buenos Aires, 2010. Published in the Matías Duville edition, Esto fue otro lugar.
Eva Grinstein, “Historias de intemperie. Drawings and paintings by Matías Duville”, Arte al Día, Buenos Aires, 2008.
30.09.2024 SHOW / FAIR / PARTY We celebrate the gallery’s first 10 years (2014—2024) THANK YOU everyone who is and was part of it!—BARRO es 10—Nicanor Aráoz, Joaquín Boz, Nacha Canvas, Gabriel Chaile, Matias Duville, Faivovich & Goldberg, Mónica Giron, Martín Legón, Lucrecia Lionti, Lolo y Lauti, Mondongo, La Chola Poblete, Marcelo Pombo, Pablo Reinoso, Alejandra Seeber, Agustina Woodgate—
21.09.2024 La vida que explota by Gabriel Chaile, Claudia Alarcón and Silät. Curator: Andrei Fernández. The sculptural ensemble of anthropomorphized beings constitutes a group portrait of Gabriel Chaile’s family tree. The work was presented for the first time at the Venice Biennial 2022 and is now exhibited permanently in the Chaile Pavilion at the recently inaugurated MALBA—PUERTOS, Escobar.
21.09.2024 “Argentina” is a set of fifteen paintings made as bas-reliefs with plasticine and other unconventional materials. These represent views of the Argentine Mesopotamian landscape in the province of Entre Ríos, which is characterized by a cycle of flooding that oscillates between the death and rebirth of the region’s flora. At Ensayos naturales I by Mondongo & Luis Ouvrard. Curated by Alejandra Aguado. MALBA—PUERTOS, Escobar.
14.09.2024 More Heat Than Light is Agustina Woodgate’s first individual exhibition in a Dutch institution. The show explores the relationship between temperature and information, and so stages an experimental communications infrastructure that reflects the unpredictable transactions between measuring and knowing.
02.09.2024 GROUP SHOW / We celebrate the gallery’s first 10 years (2014—2024) THANK YOU everyone who is and was part of it!
28.08.2024 Buenos Aires. 10th Anniversary Edition —BARRO es 10— with the participation of the gallery staff. Works by Nicanor Aráoz, Joaquín Boz, Nacha Canvas, Matías Duville, Faivovich & Goldberg, Guillermo Kuitca, Mónica Giron, Martín Legón, Lucrecia Lionti, Lolo y Lauti, Mondongo, La Chola Poblete, Pablo Reinoso Alejandra Seeber, Agustina Woodgate. In the main section of the fair.
21.08.2024 With Solo las piedras recuerdan [Only the stones remember], Martín Legón builds a paradoxical bridge between deeply analogue formal education and the sudden emergence of a knowledge technology that simultaneously opens up new horizons and, by its very existence, announces the end of the old paradigm. Artist´s Solo Show at the Museo Moderno, Buenos Aires.
14.06.2024 Manifestación [Demonstration] by the duo Mondongo proposes an homage to great artist from Rosario Antonio Berni in order to recover critical discussions around the vision of the city as emblem of modernity and progress.
13.06.2024 Basel, Switzerland. Solo show by La Chola Poblete in the Statements section of the fair. Statements is dedicated to emerging artists and brings together the most daring individual projects in the international sector.
10.06.2024 Through his works, Duville invites viewers on a journey through desolate landscapes, imbued with rarefied and eternal atmospheres that seem to herald natural cataclysms or scenes of vital abandonment that suggest the dreamlike exploration of an absent observer. In his most recent works, themes such as duality, transformation, and the passage of time take center stage.
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