Nicanor Aráoz

Nicanor Aráoz (born 1981) is a central figure in the landscape of contemporary Argentinian sculpture. Aráoz's works, which as well as sculpture include photographs, video and performance, explore the forms of the human body through images that decompose and recompose it in the face of violence, abandon and eroticism in various metamorphoses. The transformation of matter is a pivotal element in his work: evolving over time, his exhibitions have featured humanoids, larval forms and organic references of every kind, which the artist sets in scenes that approach the logic of science fiction, retrofuturism or cyberpunk. His work encompasses a vast range of images and possibilities, from early works incorporating forms from comics, cartoons and cookie brands, to his latest exhibitions that focus on trauma and foreground crime as spectacle, and the martyrdom and arousal of the body. In Aráoz's works and scenes, we witness a fundamental concern for how human beings suffer, inhabit and relate to a strained, unstable world. "Salons of strong emotions, as they have been called, his exhibitions feature references to the world of electronic music as a ritual space of social communion.