Pablo Siquier

One of the most well-known artists in Argentina and abroad, Pablo Siquier has played an active role in the art scene since the 1980s. Quickly separating himself from the Latin American avant-garde, his artworks are inspired by constructivism and concrete art and explore the potential of abstract painting.

The city is a constant source of inspiration for Pablo Siquier and thus we may see architectural structures, computer circuits, and even the aerial views in his artworks. His labyrinth compositions oscillate between geometric plans (recalling the grid structure of cuadras in the artist’s hometown of Buenos Aires) and the circular formation (of European or Native American cities), to eventually evoke the irregularity and the fragility of all human organizational forms. His works draw on the metaphor of urban evolution where the modernist architecture suffers a shared and inevitable contamination of different styles and where the disorder corrupts perfect geometry.

The notion of construction is inherent in the Pablo Siquier’s practice. Using 3D software to create infinite variations on lines and curves, the artist then transposes them onto a canvas or wall. The black line on a white background isn’t the result of an expressive gesture, but instead calculations and algorithms; meanwhile the duotones reference the binary system. The artwork titles themselves are encoded in numbers: the first two correspond to the years of creation and then they follow suit systematically, acting as a kind of inventory list.