Iván Argote, 1983-
By Dane Moffat
Dinosaur, 2024, cast aluminium on concrete
Recently, Iván Argote’s art flocked like pigeons, the subject of his new sculpture Dinosaur (2024), to every corner of my social media feeds. Born on 8th November 1983 in Bogotá, Colombia, Argote’s artistic presence emerged in video/film, but today he primarily works in sculpture and installation. His work, often through a satirical lens, reorients and recontextualises the use of public sculpture and imbues them with new meanings to challenge historical narratives, particularly in relation to structures of power.
Argote graduated from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia with a degree in Graphic Design and Cinema, from which he pursued a career in film as a director’s assistant, hence his artistic roots in video/film. A year later, in 2005, Argote participated in and won the National Young Artist Saloon, for which he received the opportunity to fly anywhere he desired. In his twenty-two years, Argote had never left Colombia and spoke only Spanish. As such, he utilised the opportunity to his advantage and moved to Paris; he enrolled in French classes to acquire a second language and reinvigorated his artistic practice through sculpture within new artistic networks. Soon after moving, Argote successfully applied to a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, during which he met gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin, by whom he is now represented. In subsequent years, Argote has staged several solo shows with Perrotin like Deep Affection in 2018, which communicated his artistic commitment to exploring oppositional politics (an inheritance from his social activist parents) in Colombia and its antipodes throughout history in film and sculpture. Since the completion of his MFA, Argote has undertaken various artist residencies internationally in cities like Los Angeles and Madrid, and in 2010 he established a permanent studio in Paris, successful enough to employ five staff.
The artist also regularly produces works in New York City, home to the High Line, the site of Dinosaur, Argote’s aforementioned sculpture which has led to renewed attention from the general public and art-world alike. It is a sixteen-foot, cast aluminium pigeon perched on a concrete plinth, versions of which are a common sight in the city and Argote’s exhibitions both, as in Prémonitions, 2022, at Galerie Perrotin. The sculpture speaks to historical processes of migration in its communication to viewers that, to some extent, like the introduction of pigeons to New York in the 1800s, all New Yorkers are immigrants. It additionally recalls Argote’s own history of immigration to France. The sculpture inverts the power structure between humankind and nature by monumentalising a descendant of dinosaurs, suggesting that we are miniscule in Earth’s history, and that we will become extinct, too. And yet, perhaps, an unknown part of humankind will outlive us.
In time, I hope that Argote will become fossilised in art-historical consciousness with the continuing evolution of his practice without being cast off violently like his artistic subjects.
Bibliography
Argote, Iván. “How To Be a Tender Rebel.” Interview by Arnau Salvadó. Metal Magazine. May 30, 2018. https://metalmagazine.eu/post/ivan-argote-how-to-be-a-tender-rebel.
De Monvel, Violaine Boutet. “Iván Argote’s Intimate Politics.” Frieze. August 17, 2018. https://www.frieze.com/article/ivan-argotes-intimate-politics.
“Dinosaur.” The High Line. October 17, 2024. https://www.thehighline.org/art/projects/ivan-argote/.
“Iván Argote.” Perrotin. Accessed October 26, 2024. https://www.perrotin.com/artists/Ivan_Argote/84#news.
“Iván Argote: Deep Affection.” Perrotin. Accessed October 28, 2024. https://www.perrotin.com/exhibitions/ivan_argote-deep-affection/6420.
The High Line (@highlinenyc). “New York—the pigeon has landed.” Instagram, October 17, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/DBO701-xr7M/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==.
“Work.” Iván Argote. Accessed October 26, 2024. https://ivanargote.com/work.