Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963) avoids fixed interpretations of his work and prefers to keep meanings open, relying on ambiguity to engage the viewer and challenge those who encounter it. Humor plays an essential role in addressing themes such as loss, nostalgia, and fallibility, bringing lightness to deep existential issues.
His drawings, installations, videos, paintings, and musical pieces often revolve around paradox, chance, and the tension between the visible and the invisible. Macchi develops his works from images rather than ideas, allowing materials, space, and visual associations to guide the process. These images are constructed from everyday elements and, through simple operations charged with poetic gesture, they destabilize perception and create room for mystery.
Drawing is the foundational language of his practice, even as his investigations expand into other media. Time—its passage, repetition, suspension, or collapse—is a constant concern in his work, as are the notions of the double and structures that seem to contain within themselves the seeds of their own instability. Macchi sees in art a capacity to provoke states of doubt and estrangement, proposing an experience that resists simplification through information or explanation. His works operate in silence—sometimes with melancholy, always with precision—inviting the viewer to experience a different kind of time: one of suspension, uncertainty, and revelation.
Among the artist's solo exhibitions, highlights include Las fases lunáticas, Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); False Autumn, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2024); Las Islas Vírgenes, Galería Elvira González, Madrid, Spain (2023); A Estatura da Liberdade, Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); The Submerged Cathedral, Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2020); Der Zauberberg, Quartz Studio, Turin, Italy (2019); Suspension Points, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2019); Double Click, with Irina Kirchuk, UNA, Hamburg, Germany; Perspectiva, CA2M Centro Cultural de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2017); MALBA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires (2016).
Recent group exhibitions include Beaufort Triennial, Beaufort, Belgium (2024); Mirror of the Mind, Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami, USA (2024); Un Lento Venir Viniendo, Oxenford Collection, Fundação Iberê, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2024); Argentina. What the Night Tells the Day, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2023); The Double: Identity and Difference in Art, Since 1900, curated by James Meyer, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA (2022); Seeing and Perceiving, King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (2021); 2nd Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de América del Sur, Ushuaia and other cities, Argentina (2019).
He has participated in the art biennales in of Liverpool (2012); Sydney (2012); Lyon (2011); Istanbul (2003 and 2011); Auckland (2010); New Orleans (2008); Yokohama (2008); Porto Alegre (2003 and 2007); São Paulo (2004 and 2006); Venice (2005); Prague (2005); Fortaleza (2002); and Havana (2000). He represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale in 2005.
His work is part of collections such as: Tate Collection, England; MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, USA; MUSAC - Museu de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; CGAC - Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; MAMBA - Museo de Arte Moderna de Buenos Aires, Argentina; MUHKA - Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, Belgium; Museo del Barrio, USA; SMAK - Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgium; MALI - Museo de Lima, Peru; MAMAC - Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, France; Fundación Arco, Spain.