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Matías Duville

Born in 1974 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Lives and work in Buenos Aires, Argentina

“A giant, frozen wave. Anthropomorphic trees dive into a lake. The possibility of holding a slice of the world in your hand. The possibility of grasping the world from somewhere else, faraway. The scenes that Matías Duville builds in his drawings in diverse materials are impossible. At first they look familiar, but they take the viewer to an other world.

Duville moves in and pulls away. He tugs at his own drawing (heeding the two meanings of that word, to render an image and to pull or remove) and, in this tensing, he carefully rips silk threads from swimming pool filters -the support for his drawings from 2003-, the wood shavings in his works from 2006, or the rough crayon, whose wax strokes disintegrate as the lines move over the paper. In this tugging and ripping of material, Duville constructs a world of destruction. At first, we seem to be before apocalyptic scenes: hurricanes, avalanches of tree trunks, accidents, floods -a list of ongoing tragedies.

Yet, this factual list does not exhaust the young artist’s imaginary. Far from placing himself in the world of the real, Duville locates his catastrophes in a distant, fantastical plane, and thus strips them of their tragic nature. He effects a transference from the objective reference of the real world to the possibility of an impossible world. He endows his drawings with a paradox that is, perhaps, related to the one Berger formulated in relation to Magritte: “To destroy familiar experience he needed to use the language of the familiar.””

Victoria Noorthoorn

Individual exhibitions
2012 – Safari – Malba, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina
2012 – Los martes menta – Revolver Gallery, Lima, Peru
2011 – Whistle – Nueveochenta Gallery, Bogotá, Colombia
2010 – Esto fue otro lugar – Luisa Strina Gallery, Sao Pablo, Brazil
2010 – El aullido del cristal – Alberto Sendros Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2009 – Safari en el crepúsculo – Distrito 4 Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2008 – Descampado – Revolver Gallery, Lima, Peru
2008 – Una Escena Perdida – Alberto Sendros Gallery, Bs As, Arg
2007 – Cover – MUSAC, Laboratorio 987,Castilla y León, Spain
2006 – Propulsión – Baro Cruz Gallery, Sao Pablo, Brazil
2005 – Autocine – Macro, Rosario, Argentina
2005 – Travelling – Alberto Sendros Gallery, Buenos Airess, Argentina. Curator: Jorge Macchi
2003 – Distancia – Alberto Sendros Gallery, Buenos, Aires, Argentina

Collective exhibitions
2012 – Tenth parallel – Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Modena, Italy
2011 – Reformation 2011 – Skowhegan 2011 group show, Maine, USA
2010 – First and last, Notes on the monument – Luisa Strina Gallery, Sao paulo, Brazil
2010 – Smart Exhibition – Freedom Tower, Miami, USA
2010 – Modelos para armar – Musac, Spain
2009 – Vamos – Nueveochenta Gallery, Bogota, Colombia
2009 – Huesped – MUSAC Collection,Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes ,Buenos Aires, Argentina
2009 – Destructivo Arte – Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Airess, Argentina
2009 – Escuelismo – MALBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2009 – Benefit auction,Drawing Center,New York, USA
2008 – Narrative/Non-Narrative: Contemporary Artists from the CIFO Programs, SCOPE, Miami, USA
2007 – Signos de existencias – Museum of Contemporary Art, de Santiago de Chile
2006 – Run for your life – Diverse Works art space, Houston, USA
2006 – Interfaces – Fondo Nacional de las artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2005 – Panoramix – PROA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2005 – 2d – C,C Parque de España, Rosario, Argentina
2005 – Liernur, Pierri, Duville, Peña – Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Alianza Francesa, Buenos Aires
2004 – Transversal – Baro Cruz Gallery, San Pablo, Brazil
2004 – Salón nacional de Rosario – Museo Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina
2004 – BBAX – Villa Elizabeth, Berlin, Germany
2004, Rosemberg/ Duville/ Chen, MAC, Bahía Blanca, Argentina
2002, – Curriculum 0 – Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2002, – Portátiles – Doppia V, Lugano Gallery, Switzerland

Scholarships/Residencies
2011 – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, USA
2011 – Skowhegan Residency, scholarship, USA
2010 – Ibere Camargo Residency,Porto Alegre, Brazil
2008 – Revolver art Residency Lima, Peru
2007 – Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Italy
2005 – RIAA, International artists Residency in Argentina, Ostende, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2004 – Stimulation for visual arts scholarship, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2003 – Workshop Program for Visual Arts, Centro Cultural Rojas, UBA / Kuitca, Buenoss Aires, Argentina
2003 – TRAMA, Programa of cooperation and confrontation between artists, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2002 – Visual arts scholarship, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos, Aires, Argentina
2001 – 2002 – Fundacion antorchas scholarship, Studies with Jorge Macchi, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1999 – Production and working analysis scholarship, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos, Aires, Argentina
1995 – 1998 – Visual art studies at the Martín Malharro Superior school of Visual Arts ,