Jorge Macchi

The Argentine conceptualist painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Jorge Macchi makes works that are challenging, loaded, and delightful in their utter simplicity. He doesn’t often tarry long in any one subject or medium, though he has shown an abiding interest in music and its representations. His 2003-4 video Caja de música (“music box”) turns overhead footage of a six-lane highway into an automatic musical instrument. In his found text piece Monoblock (2003), text from several pages of obituaries in an Argentine newspaper are excised, leaving only crosses, Stars of David, or crescent moons, used to note which religion the deceased had practiced. The result is contemplative collage of newsprint, in a shape reminiscent of an apartment block.

Macchi is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, retrospectives at the Walker Art Center, the Blanton Museum, and the Hammer Museum, and has participated in over a dozen biennials, including Venice and and Sydney.