Artists

ULISES MAZZUCCA

For Ulises Mazzuca, as for many artists training in the context of Argentina after the economic and political crisis of 2001, drawing has been the main vector through which he has constructed his work. Mazzuca has made use of what might well be described as “school”, such as Rivadavia notebooks and graphite pencils, to construct scenes as fantastical as they are everyday, portraits in black and white of a youthful and adolescent world of transits, accidents and encounters, affections and violence.
This gesture, which in Mazzuca is the expansion of drawing to any material and surface, entails streetwise skills, gained through observation and an experience of the marginal forms of of the image’s emergence. There is something rabid in his use of these resources a destructive impulse, the expression of a desire for everything to explode or turn to ashes: writing with the flame of a lighter under the platform of a train station, or on a wall of Bic biro, grafting a forbidden wall, writing and drawing on urban fittings like the bus stop or the school desk.
Standing in front of Mazzucca it is hard not to think of precarity as an experience lodged in young bodies, and not just because the line of his drawings created by the coming and going of the pencil underlining and correcting the same line, or his playful, amateur technique recognises no vanishing points or technical resources, recall drawings done in idle hours at the secondary school, or on the pages of a folder, which Mazzucca has actually used on other occasion. There are the symbols of a certain youth culture, strewn on the floor or on the grass or hanging from wires. T-shirts, music, backpacks, trainers recover that world of budding, vulnerable identities.
Buses, squares, bikes and the street, tents and swings feature repeatedly in his drawings: spaces and elements that, while also plotting an urban experience of passage and movement through the city, pause at those places where the buildings thin and apparently unoccupied spaces open. These are areas that recall the kind of park or wasteland that sees illegal land takeovers, places that have to occupied urgently before someone does. The swarm -that figure political philosophers set against the mass when speaking of purposeless human groups- imposes itself as a description of these disordered spaces, where people and things are scattered and out in the open.

Selected Works

Trieja
2022 Chalk pastel on phenolic multilaminated 18 mm" 235 x 127 cm
Tatuaje de dragón
2022 Pastel chalk on 18 mm phenolic plywood 130x60 cm
CONSULTAR

ULISES MAZZUCCA CV

Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, 1997.
Studied Fine Arts at the National University of Rosario. He has been part of the Torcuato Di Tella University’s Artists Programme, in Buenos Aires in 2017, and the Works Follow-up Clinic taught by Claudia del Río and Carlos Herrera at Plataforma Lavarden, in Rosario in 2015. He is currently artist in residence at the Munar Centre, in La Boca, Buenos Aires. His solo exhibitions include: Lágrima impermeable [Waterproof Tear], Diego Obligado Gallery, Rosario, 2019; En su rodilla un polvo cobrizo [On his Knee a Coppery Powder], at the Isabel Croxatto Gallery, Santiago de Chile, 2019; and Hoy la gloria es tuya [Today the Glory is Yours], Rosario Art Week, 2017. Since 2019, he has given drawing workshops for adult women and teenagers in vulnerable neighbourhoods. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.

Individual exhibitions

2022
Fuegos Artificiales. Galería Sendros. CABA, Argentina

2021
Gimnasia Espiritual. Curaduría: Lucrecia Palacios. Museo MODERNO. CABA, Argentina.

2019
Lágrima Impermeable. Diego Obligado Galería de Arte. Rosario, Argentina
En su rodilla un polvo cobrizo. Curaduría: Carlos Herrera. Isabel Croxatto Galería. Santiago de Chile.

2017
Hoy la gloria es tuya. 13°Semana del Arte en Rosario, Argentina.
Se me está gastando la voz. Ciclo de Muestras A la Cal. Curaduría: Guadalupe Creche. Ciudad de Santa Fe, Argentina

Group exhibitions

2023
ARCO. Galería Sendros. Madrid España.

2022
ARTEBA. Galería Sendros. C.A.B.A., Argentina

2019
Fuego Sonámbulo.MUNAR. C.A.B.A., Argentina.
Contemporary Istanbul. Isabel Croxatto Galería. Turquía.
Mercado de Arte de Córdoba. Isabel Croxatto Galería. Córdoba, Argentina.
ARTEBA. MITE Galería. C.A.B.A. Argentina.
Art Central. Isabel Croxatto Galería. Hong Kong

2018
Thesaurus Visual, posibles modos del intervalo. Curaduría: Guillermina Mongan y Federico Ruvituso. Centro Universitario de Arte de La Plata. Argentina
CH.ACO. Isabel Croxatto Galería. Santiago de Chile.
Alimentar un río para ahogarnos juntos. Solo Project Zona Bonino Mercado de Arte de Córdoba. Proyecto A la Cal. Córdoba, Argentina.

2017
Premio Fundación Federico Klemm. CABA, Argentina.
Una Unidad Indivisible. Curaduría: Gonzalo Lagos. Gachi Prieto Galería. CABA, Argentina.

Scholarships and Residences

2018-2019
Taller Boca de Fuego. Residencia en Centro Munar. CABA, Argentina

2018
Fundación Vicentin. Beca Programa de Artistas Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. CABA, Argentina

2015
Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Beca Clínica La Basurita. Rosario, Santa Fé, Argentina.

Texts

Gimnasia espiritual [Spiritual Gymnastics], by Lucrecia Palacios

Ulises Mazzucca (Santa Fe, 1997) has, in recent years, built a universe in graphite, a black-and-white world populated by young people enjoying and suffering a context as pleasant as it is aggressive. With their narrative bent, his works comprise small texts, imaginary or biographical legends, charting what the artist calls ‘an emotional cartography’: the gathering and analysis of the affections and afflictions that go to make up our sentimental education.

 

Gimnasia espiritual [Spiritual Gymnastics], his first exhibition in a museum, brings together two series made in the past year. In one series, the dances and positions of the characters are reminiscent of instruction in ascetic or yogic practices. The bruised and banged-up skins of the characters and the appearance of ghostly figures recall religious art, revealing a desire for atonement, but above all, demonstrating how our sensible history resurfaces in the form of wounds.

 

In the other, the velodrome, swimming pool or running track are the settings for the transformation of paddle-tennis bats, boules or bicycles into weapons. The sports chosen – all competitive – create a ruthless, surreal atmosphere, an uncertain, unbalanced ambiance that is, in Mazzucca’s work, also a commentary on the experience of precariousness. His lines advance fluently, multiplying the stories as they go and supplementing the scenes with a plurality of details that bring the drawing closer to the ambition of the novel.

 

The drawings in this exhibition set out to plot the effects of physical movements on our feelings and, counter-wise, the impact of our thoughts and heartaches on the body. Mazzucca thus reflects in images the narrative of how to withstand grief, joy, excitement, loneliness, vulnerability or competition.

Press

EL FLASHERITO. La magnitud de una luciérnaga, por Manuel Quaranta
INDIEHOY. Gimnasia espiritual, por Emmanuel Franco