This monograph dedicated to Ivan Argote presents the richness of the Colombian artist's work. Using photography, film, sculpture, as well as painting, he invites us to rethink the links between the intimate and the political and to question the proponents of dominant ideologies.
The book starts with an essay by author and curator Matthew Schum. It discusses a major project by Iván Argote: A Point of View, a site specifc worl by the artist installed in Coachella Valley during the Biennale Desert X. It discusses its genesis, and situates this piece in Argote's work. This essay is followed by an interview of Ivan Argote by Kathryn Weir; she questions the artist on his conception of the "monument", a transversal theme in his work that casts a critical eye on the mode of representation of power that the monument constitutes.
Iván Argote (born 1983 in Bogotá, based in Paris) is a Colombian artist and film director. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our intimate relationship with others, institutions, power and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he suggests critical approaches to dominant historical narratives and attempts to decentralise them. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale installations and performances, Iván Argote proposes new symbolic uses of public space.
Works by the artist are included in the permanent collections of numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York, US); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); ASU Art Museum (Phoenix, US); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami, US); Colección de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá, Colombia); Kadist (San Francisco, US); MACBA (Barcelona, Spain).
