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Biography

MARTA CHILINDRON
[1951, Argentina]

"I am looking for the engine of life; what keeps everything together and functioning. I use movement because it implies instability and illustrates the continuous change of our uncertain realities."

Raised in Montevideo, Marta Chilindron relocated to New York in 1969, where she attended the State University of New York in Old Westbury. While studying for her BFA, she spent two summers in the Camnitzer-Porter Studio in Valdottavo, Italy, in 1977 and 1978, studying printmaking. The dedicated focus on her studio practice during these summers abroad was foundational for Chilindron, and inspired her to pursue a life in the arts.

In her early paintings, Chilindron looked to familiar settings and recreated them in paintings, but with dramatic changes in perspective. Her use of extreme foreshortening alluded to the artist herself, as if the viewer could see from the artist's line of vision. Chilindron calls these works "self-portraits," although she never painted her face. Instead, the paintings include the artist's hands or a foot, as she appears to move through the scene. In 1980, Chilindron took this approach to wood sculptures, in which she used the skewed perspective to construct basic furniture. These objects call attention to the relationship between the human body and its surrounding environment, a concern that Chilindron continues to explore in her work to date.

In the early 1990s, Chilindron studied drawing with Julio Alpuy, an Uruguayan artist trained by Joaquín Torres-García. Combined with the technical and conceptual training she received in Italy, her studies with Alpuy provided her with a strong foundation in geometry and abstraction, from the perspective of the School of South. "This brought me back to a more concrete world," she observes, "exploring abstraction, but with geometry in it."

Throughout the 1990s, Chilindron collaborated with conceptual artist Eduardo Costa to create a series of public interventions. In 1992, she and Costa created "Touched by Light," in which they projected an image of a hand on the facades of Manhattan buildings from a moving truck. The duo also created projects in Brazil and Chile. By the late 1990s, Chilindron had begun making collapsible sculptures, using hinges to allow the objects to be moved and changed. In 1999, she created a site-specific installation for El Museo del Barrio in New York. Titled Cinema Kinesis, the resulting project moved between being a flat plane on the ground to being a three-dimensional structure that consisted of three rows of movie theater seats and a screen.

In 2000, Chilindron received a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant and began working with transparent materials. Her work has expanded to include the exploration of layered colors and moveable geometric forms. "I like to see all the sides of the work without walking around," she says. "You can stay still and walk with your mind around the works."

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Selected Solo Exhibitions

2023
Orange Cube, Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, NY, USA    

2022
Parallel Greens, (wall sculpture), Jones School of Business, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

2019    
Houston Mobius, Inaugural Installation of the Public Art of the University of Houston System’s (PAUHS) new Temporary Public Art Program, University of Houston, TX, USA
Geometry at Play: Sculpture by Marta Chilindron, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, NY, USA
Diálogos, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., Frieze New York, New York, NY, USA

2018    
Marta Chilindron: GEO, Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

2015    
Temporal Systems, Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami, FL, USA
Marta Chilindron, Alejandra von Hartz Fine Arts, Miami, FL, USA

2014    
Expand//Fold//Collapse: Sculptures by Marta Chilindron, The Great Hall Exhibitions, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York, NY, USA
Orange Cube, Encounters, Hong Kong Art Basel, China

2013    
Marta Chilindron: Integral Geometries, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA, USA

2012    
Marta Chilindron, Galeria Laura Marsiaj, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Marta Chilindron, Galeria Moura Marsiaj, São Paulo, Brazil

2011    
Marta Chilindron: Constructions, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, NY, USA

2010    
Marta Chilindron, Galerie Alejandra von Hartz, Miami, FL, USA

2008    
Marta Chilindron, Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

2006    
Sculpture in Four Dimensions, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY, Old Westbury, NY, USA
Marta Chilindron, VCUQ Gallery, Doha, Qatar

2004    
New Work, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, NY, USA
Marta Chilindron, Kantoor Langeveld, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2001    
Sculptures, Dot Galerie, Geneva, Switzerland 

1999    
Marta Chilindron, Cinema Kinesis installation, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA

1997    
Dimensions, Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, NY, USA

1994    
Talking Paintings & Dreams, IBEU Copacabana & IBEU Madureira, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (with Eduardo Costa)

1993    
Mag Sculptures, Gallery B, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA
Touched by Light, (A Street Work), New York, NY, USA (with Eduardo Costa)

1991    
Living Sculptures, (series of 4), New York, NY, USA (with Eduardo Costa)

1987    
Outdoor Installation, CUNY, QCC, Bayside, New York, NY, USA

1986    
Permanent Installation, York College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA

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Selected Public Collections

Banco Espírito Santo, Libson, Portugal

Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA

Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, FL, USA

City University of New York, QCC Art Gallery, New York, NY, USA

City University of New York, York College, New York, NY, USA

Dot Galerie Collection, Geneva, Switzerland

El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA

Fonds d’art contemporain de la ville de Genève, Switzerland

IBEU Cultural Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jones School of Business, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., USA

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA

Phoenix Art Museum,  AZ, USA

Sayago & Pardon Collection, Los Angeles, CA, USA

SPACE Collection, Irvine, CA, USA

University of Houston (UofH), Houston, TX, USA