MACCHI, JEŽIK AND HERNÁNDEZ: RETHINKING THE CONTEMPORARY THROUGH MEDIA LANGUAGE

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo (MARCO) brings together, in Colección MARCO, 5. Secuencias, paisajes, works by Jorge Macchi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963), Enrique Ježik (Córdoba, Argentina, 1961) and Jonathan Hernández (Mexico City, Mexico, 1972). This grouping is conceived in relation to the exhibition Hay un lugar, by Alberto Ardid, presented simultaneously by the institution. In this way, points of connection are established between these three Latin American artists and the practice of the Spanish artist, regardless of their belonging to an earlier generation.

The approaches of Macchi, Ježik and Hernández articulate critical perspectives on the contemporary, employing a media-based language that permeates the construction of reality and the ways in which it is perceived. Drawing on everyday materials and informational imagery, their works reinterpret semiotic structures that often remain in the background; the reorganisation of these elements thus becomes an alternative narrative and, simultaneously, a tool for critical inquiry.

Jorge Macchi constructs an unsettling message in Víctima serial (2001), a series in which fragments of advertising texts collected in the city are transformed, both stylistically and metaphorically, into anonymous threats composed of cut-out words. In the other series included in the exhibition, Doppelgänger (2004), the Argentine artist engages in an analysis of the parameters and habitual structures of communication, establishing formal symmetries between different narratives that nevertheless coincide in their extensive use of journalistic clichés.

In You Are Under Arrest (2000–2002), Jonathan Hernández continues his archival work with published information related to security and social control. His proposal opens a line of reflection on how fear and insecurity condition contemporary life. Enrique Ježik, for his part, presents Paisajes (2006), a series based on aerial photographs of bombings carried out during the Yugoslav conflicts. Through the presentation of territories transformed by the effects of barbarity, the work advances a direct critique of war and institutional violence.

Colección MARCO, 5. Secuencias, paisajes. Jonathan Hernández, Enrique Ježik, Jorge Macchi can be seen until 6 September 2026 at MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo, Príncipe 54, Vigo (Spain).