Martín Legón (Buenos Aires, 1978) varies freely between installations, drawings, paintings and procedures such as the recovery of photographic collections. His production reveals his interest in poetically linking texts and quotes from sociology, literature and art history. Just as it happens with the juxtaposition of an assembly of cinematographic attractions, the references he chooses display chains of critical and conceptual statements. In recent years, Legón has revisited topics such as the structures of work, the production of images and the place of the artist in modern-day society. While referring to failed modernist utopias, his works may hover between romantic-idealistic atmospheres and a certain spirit of contemporary decadentism.
Martín Legón has held many solo exhibitions, some of his most recent ones are Solo las piedras recuerdan (Museo Moderno, Buenos Aires, 2024), Árboles profundamente artificiales (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2021), La seducción de los inocentes (Ángels, Barcelona, 2018), Quatrenial Shanzhai (Museo Genaro Pérez, Córdoba, 2018), Nuevos pensamientos imbéciles (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2017), Las fuerzas productivas (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2015), La vuelta al mundo… curated by Inés Katzenstein and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy in collaboration with the Arts Department of University Torcuato Di Tella and Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Buenos Aires, 2014), Principios para un manifiesto especular (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Santa Fe, 2013), Así pasa la gloria del mundo (Galería Alberto Sendrós, Buenos Aires, 2011). He was one of the youngest Argentinian artists to be a part of San Pablo Biennial in the XXX edition “La Inminencia de las Poéticas” curated by Luis Pérez Oramas (2012).In the past few years some of his essays were published: La naturaleza del artificio (Big Sur Zine, 2012), El Test del Hombre bajo la lluvia (Arta Ediciones, 2012), Apuntes a la Colección Globus (Big Sur Books, 2016) and Maleza (Editorial Ivan Rosado, 2016). Legón’s works are part of several importants collection such as Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) Móstoles, España; Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Franklin Rawson de San Juan and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (Macro), Argentina. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Interpreting them consecutively, the individual exhibitions from Martín Legón have been unfolding visual analytical essays for more than fifteen years. In this respect, Árboles profundamente artificiales may be understood as a cubist installation, where its subject of study—Argentine society and its current possibilities—is broken down into different planes to deliver its many faces simultaneously.
María Carolina Baulo, "Antropología del Concepto: Una Conversación con Martín Legón". Sculpture Magazine, Febrero 2022
Las fuerzas productivas (Barro, 2015)
“Principios para un manifiesto especular”, 2014. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, MACRO.
Blanca María Monzón, “Martín Legón en la Bienal de San Pablo Reflexiones sobre la Identidad”. Leedor, Septiembre, 2012
Melina Ruiz Natali, “Entrevista a Martín Legón”. Arte al Día Online, Diciembre 2012
Alejandra Villasmil, “La mise en escene de Martín Legón”. Artishock, Junio 2011.
17.12.2024 Juxtaposing the past and the present, the exhibition presents works from different periods and artistic currents, highlighting visions of LGBTQIA+ historias that transcend time and space, as well as pointing to strategies of resistance. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa & Julia Bryan-Wilson at Museo de Arte de São Paulo, MASP. Until abril, 2025.
06.12.2024 Miami Beach, USA. BARRO presents a series of works by Mondongo, La Chola Poblete, Lucrecia Lionti and Joaquín Boz. The artworks selected for this edition call into question the conceptual relation between materiality and image. Main Sector, Convention Center, Florida.
17.11.2024 Cárcel & Vals, 2024, textile artwork by Lucrecia Lionti, won the Award Gobierno de la Provincia de Santa Fe (acquisition) by unanimous decision. The award jury was made up of Fernando Farina, Nancy Rojas and Lucía Stubrin
16.11.2024 BARRO Buenos Aires presents Los jóvenes olvidaron sus canciones o Tierra de fuego (Parte II), the second exhibition by GABRIEL CHAILE in the gallery. With a text by Filipa Ramos, the show presents a new line of work the artist began this year and consists in a film with mural drawings made from adobe and iron.
15.11.2024 On Saturday November 16th, BARRO Buenos Aires opens Los jóvenes olvidaron sus canciones o Tierra de fuego (Parte II), the second exhibition by Gabriel Chaile in the gallery. With a text by Filipa Ramos, the show presents a new line of work the artist began this year and consists in a film of mural drawings made of adobe and iron.
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!
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