Juan Tessi (Perú,1972)

“Tessi is a sort of prophet of pictorial interspecies…It is not important which of the deities is being incarnated, what matters is to challenge the limits of painting and the closure of language…” Javier Villa

Born in 1972 in Lima, Perú, Tessi lives and works in Buenos Aires. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He has had sixteen solo exhibitions, including Cameo in 2016, at MALBA, Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires —a major regional art institution— as well as shows at galleries in Buenos Aires; Lisbon, Portugal; Santiago, Chile; Sao Paulo, Brazil and a solo presentation at Frieze New York. Group exhibitions include Ultramar: Fontana, Kuitca, Tessi, Seeber at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain and Empujar un Ismo at the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.

Juan Tessi’s work is an ongoing exploration of the language of painting as it moves from one pictorial support, format and approach to another. The body is ever present, intersecting reflections on queer desire and the relation between painting and biological processes. Tessi has also explored the tension between craft and technology, approaching painting both as surface and as object, the results being the creation of very personal poetics always grounded in pictorial processes.