The Museo Moderno presents Daniel Basso’s (Mar del Plata, 1974) first solo exhibition in an Argentinian museum, a series of new works produced especially for the occasion. They express this Mar del Plata artist’s recurring concerns: the bittersweet memory of the Atlantic Coast, the night and its hollow joy, the everyday beauty of commercial design.
With its visually fascinating objects ranging across sculpture, architecture and pure ornamentation, Basso constructs simulacra that are as habitable as they are artificial, infused with a powerful spirit of play. Changes of scale, optical tricks and contrasting textures and colours make his environments a purely fictional game of appearances.
In an original reading of the cultural atmosphere of the 1990s, Basso turns his attention to nightclub décor, the clichés of mass tourism and the exaltation of surfaces in order to push the limits of formal eccentricity. The result immerses the visitor in an evanescent setting of sheer illusion.
Curator: Franco Chimento
Museum Design: Iván Rösler
Production: Edgar Lacombe
Daniel Basso (Mar del Plata, 1974) studied painting at the Martín Malharro School of Visual Arts, in his hometown. In 2002, he began to focus on developing his own art. He has been a recipient of grants from Fundación Antorchas, the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Fundación Telefónica, TRAMA (sponsored by the Rijksakademie), as well as the Argentine Ministry of Culture and the Fundación Oxenford.
In 2009, together with artist Juan José Souto, he founded Mundo Dios, a contemporary art education and promotion project in Mar del Plata, where he worked as a curator, managing editor and teacher until 2019.
He has held several solo exhibitions, including, most recently, La actuación de las máquinas [The Performance of Machines] at the Calvaresi gallery (Buenos Aires, 2023). He has participated in group and individual shows at biennials, fairs and art salons, both in Argentina and abroad.
His work can be found in public collections such as the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Malba Puertos, Museo Castagnino+Macro (Rosario), the Provincial Museum of the City of Corrientes, and the Juan C. Castagnino Municipal Art Museum in Mar del Plata.
In 2017, Basso was selected for the Braque Prize and participated in a residency in Madrid at Nave Oporto art studios. In 2019, he was the recipient of the 1st ITAÚ Prize in Visual Arts and completed a three-month residency at Atelier Mondial in Basel, Switzerland. He won the XXIV Klemm Award in 2020. He is currently a guest teacher at the Manglar Visual Arts programme in Buenos Aires.
Daniel Basso lives and works in Buenos Aires.