The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires presents El salón de los caprichos (The Hall of Fancy), the first anthological exhibition of work by Max Gómez Canle (Buenos Aires, 1972) featuring a selection of pieces made between 1999 and the present day. Fascinated by the history of art and images, Gómez Canle has developed a virtuoso technique that he employs in different experiments with materials and subject matter, making him a leading figure in contemporary Argentine painting. His work reaffirms the relevance of painting as a medium for reflections on time and the expression of a fantastical imaginative world.
In this exhibition, new images from down the ages spin around the space in a near spiral to create a vibrant encounter between Western pictorial tradition and contemporary voracity. Flemish landscapes from the 15th century mix at random with avant garde output such as Argentine geometric abstraction and references from outside the art world: video games and other elements of digital culture. The Renaissance, Romanticism, the Baroque and Metaphysical Surrealism form part of an inexhaustible gallery of images gleaned from books, catalogues and the internet. The work of Max Gómez Canle is a voluptuous encyclopaedia, a personal take on the history of art with heavily annotated pages. Every note, artwork and landscape add to the bliss expanding across the horizon, that mysterious schism between heaven and earth. Ruins, stormy skies, mountains, animals and fantastical characters are all part of this repertory, which builds an on-going dialogue with the past, a cordial relationship without a trace of nostalgia but plenty of playfulness and sensuality.
Max Gómez Canle (Buenos Aires, 1972) studied painting at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón in the early nineties. His education included courses in set design, carpentry and restoration, among other subjects. He has been exhibiting his artworks regularly in Argentina since 2001 and in São Paulo, Brazil, since 2006. His paintings have won the competition held to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2008), the competition “10 años de Bola de Nieve” (10 Years of Snowball, 2008) and the LXI Salón Nacional de Rosario (2007). He has also won the Premio Ignacio Pirovano al Artista Joven (2007), given by the Argentine Association of Art Critics and First Prizes in competitions run by the Fundación Andreani (2013) and the Fundación Federico Klemm (2014) and received an arteBA-FLORA grant for a residency in Colombia.
In 2009 he was selected to exhibit his work as part of the Ventana project, in which he covered the façade of the Edificio Del Plata on 9 de Julio Avenue in Buenos Aires. His numerous solo exhibitions in Buenos Aires include Condición y cabeza [Condition and Head] at the Fundación Jorge Federico Klemm (2016), and Invasiones mutuas [Mutual Invasions], at the Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte (2014). His exhibitions overseas include Fisonomía del tiempo [Physiognomy of Time] at Flora ars+natura, Bogotá (2014), and El devenir de una memoria [The Course of a Memory] at the Galería Casa Triângulo, São Paulo (2013).
