Beto De Volder

biography

The curve is the omnipresent element in the works of Beto De Volder (1962 – Buenos Aires). His soft geometries unfold in space in openwork shapes made up of lines that run in different directions, opposing, crossing and intercepting each other, reinforcing their union through the flat use of color. De Volder previously experienced this practice in drawing: from linear lattices where he randomly selected a shape cutout.

His work area is delimited between the tradition of abstract art and a visual world linked to the cultural industry and everyday life. De Volder is part of the active group of artists in Buenos Aires who, since the 1990s, have based their work in the re-elaboration of abstract-geometric pieces in an exercise of memory and reconnection with the 1940sArgentine avant-garde inventive proposals. The intersection between a world of pure forms and industrial aesthetic result is, in turn, akin to the intersection between the abstractionist tradition and the cultural industry as introduced by Argentine kinetics artists of the 1960s.

De Volder’s work proposes an insistent reflection on the modes of appearance and on the morphology of the line as a transcendent element. In his works the avant-garde antinomy between figuration and abstraction and, above all, between presentation and representation, reappears with the richness of an open end.

Beto de Volder studied at the Manuel Belgrano National School of Fine Arts. In 1994 he was awarded a scholarship by the Antorchas Foundation to work in the Barracas Workshop, dictated by Luis Fernando Benedit and Pablo Suárez. In 2007 he also received a Mention in the National Drawing Salon, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions, among which are: All Boys, Franklin Rawson Museum, San Juan, Argentina (2016); Geometry, deviations and excesses, Fundación OSDE, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013); Some Artists / 90-Today, Fundación PROA (2013), Geométricos Hoy: Caminos en Expansión, MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012); Beto de Volder, Durban Segnini, Miami, USA (2012); More, Palatina Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009); Untitled, Palatina Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2007); among others. As complementary projects, between 2003 and 2005 he coordinated La recolección –proyecto that brings together contemporary works of Argentine art donated by the artists themselves to the MALBA (Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires), Argentina. He also coordinated, from October 2003 to July 2004, with Fernando Brizuela, Marita García, Josefina Lamarre and Mariano Dal Verme the exhibition Volume 3. He currently lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.