Jorge Macchi: Mikrokosmos

Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased to present its fourth solo exhibition by Argentinean artist Jorge Macchi. Born in Buenos Aires, the Argentinean capital remains still today the pivotal center of his artistic work.

Representing the diversity of media in Macchi‘s oeuvre, the show displays in a challenging manner a selection of paintings, installations, works on paper and photographic works. Inspired by the collection of progressive piano pieces Mikrokosmos, composed by Bela Bartók between 1926 and 1939, Jorge Macchi creates with his exhibition a little universe: the works on view act just like Bartók‘s etudes, and continuously increase in their level of complexity, building up on each other. At first each piece acts for itself. Yet, the invisible parallels and links that keep all the works together within the cosmos are soon sensed. Familiar components from technique, materiality and format; or fragments of images can be encountered consistently though assembled in an entire different way. 

The reference to music is also a driving force throughout Macchi's work, giving it at times a formal, and at times a content-related frame. So it is no surprise when we walk through the exhibition and come across Línea y punto on a sheet of music of Bartók's Mikrokosmos: directly on the white gallery walls hangs a simple small-sized sheet of paper showing the score of an Etude by Bartók. Like a waterfall, flexible iron wires of varying thickness fall arbitrarily to the ground from each individual note. Music, which is actually something fleeting and intangible, becomes suddenly an unusual haptic element that connects with the physical exhibition space.