GRAZ.- Diego Bianchi (born in Buenos Aires in 1969, lives in Buenos Aires and most recently Paris) is considered one of Argentina’s leading artists and has, in particular, updated the concept of sculpture. For his installative and performative exhibition Errores Irreales at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Bianchi has assembled a selection of his sculptures that play with the concept of the body in order to activate them performatively in a specially created architectural setting. For the elaborate and detailed production of his astonishingly lively yet sensitive sculptures, Bianchi uses not only conventional materials but also discarded objects found in the urban spaces of Buenos Aires, Paris, and Graz: these can be inconspicuous, small things that supposedly have no particular value or meaning, or car parts, metals, plastics, and fashion items. The result is a stage-like landscape of sculptures and installation interventions that play with the physical and the quasi-organic-inner in a disturbing and stylish way, and in various overlapping settings—sometimes also activated by performers—become a “nebulous whole” that is paradigmatic for the time in which we live. Bianchi uses humor as a subversive strategy to counteract, or at least respond to, the tragedy of existence and all the current crises by means of a utopian space. Bianchi uses humor as a subversive strategy to counteract, or at least respond to, the tragedy of existence and all the current crises by means of a utopian space.

The “body” is under pressure. There is little that is so close and essential to us as the idea and the substance of the body, and at the same time so shapeable and vulnerable. Thus it is not surprising that not only the perception and interpretation of the body in general has become so diverse and controversial, but also its depiction in sculpture, whose traditional approaches to materiality, shaping, hybridity, and fluidity are all now being redefined. Today there are new paths in sculpture that aim to better grasp in form our contemporary sense of the body and its diverse interpretations. Bianchi’s immersive sculptural installations reinterpret the concepts of sculpture and of the torso, taking seriously the sensitivity and distress of the human body as subjected to manifold pressures, and expanding and updating its forms of expression. The place of the body in society, exposed to all the increasing demands of our time, plays a key role – both from a biological and a technological perspective. Bianchi works primarily with found objects from his own environment, drawing our attention to the excesses and wastage of contemporary consumer culture.

As the title Errores Irreales suggests, Bianchi is here attempting to bring together seemingly opposite worlds in overlaps and interaction within an unreal and defamiliarized setting. There are fragments of shop-window mannequins and consumer goods that in their new context and usage highlight the absurdity of our fascination for the world of commodities. Bianchi is interested in the ways in which we are connected with these objects and how they influence our daily lives. Observing the transformation of everyday objects after their use reveals the interrelationship between nature and social behavior, the rise and fall of urban and biological developments, as well as disasters, accidents, and coincidences that are capable of creating previously unimagined orders. Bianchi focuses on consumption chains, their cycles, and the associated lifespan of objects, including furniture and other belongings, which vary from society to society. Bianchi reads the passage of time and the use of objects from their signs of wear and tear, using this information to draw conclusions about individual phenomena and systems. Responding to the immediate, usually urban environment,

which the artist himself understands as an organism, he takes the human body as his starting point, distorts its form, expands it, and, in interaction with other “bodies” and objects, introduces it into an unusually charged social structure in unusual poses and constellations. He does not distinguish between human bodies and malleable objects, insofar as his installations sometimes readjust our perception of a “plastic” body image, with his torsos exhibiting various variations, including cyborg- like inclusions that remind us of familiar objects.

Diego Bianchi sees each of his projects as an extraordinary adventure in which he connects his immediate impressions, experiences, and knowledge with reality and views it from a critical perspective as something isolated and “foreign,” literally taking it apart and reforming it into something “different.” The result is a kaleidoscopic, apocalyptic reflection of reality, which, in its artistic translation, appears attractive due to the recognizability of aesthetic conventions and markers, sometimes associated with symbolism and codes of taste and lifestyle, yet at the same time repulsive in its depiction of physical deformities and decay. Plastic of plastic and also bioplastic, or Errores Irreales: art works against aesthetics and transience in order to create precisely these and to miraculously expand the white cube through its overall installation. For, similar to the relationship between objects and subjects, Bianchi understands the architecture of the museum itself, in which there is neither an inside nor an outside, but which, as a building in urban space, reflects a supposed reality in order to reinterpret it as a design.

Diego Bianchi (*1969 Buenos Aires, lives in Buenos Aires and most recently in Paris)
Solo exhibitions (selection): Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Romainville (2025), New Performance Turku Biennale, Turku (2023), Museo abandonado, Dakar (2023), Marres, Maastricht (2023), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2022), Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Romainville (2020), 11th Liverpool Biennial (2020), BIENALSUR, Córdoba (2019), BIENALSUR, Valparaíso (2017), Centro de creación contemporain, Madrid (2017), Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (2017), Barro Gallery, Buenos Aires (2016), Wiener Festwochen (2015), Centro de Arte Experimental, Buenos Aires (2015), Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires (2010), Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires (2009), Centro Uno de Arte Contemporáneo, Rio Negro (2007).
Group exhibitions (selection): ARCOmadrid (2025), MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine (2024), Pivô, São Paulo (2024), macLYON, Lyon (2024), Bienal de Coimbra, Portugal (2024), Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Romainville (2024, 2023), Marres, Maastricht (2023), CAPC, Bordeaux (2023), Centre Pompidou, Metz (2022), Musée de la Haute Vienne Château de Rochechouart (2023), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (2021), Centre d’art contemporaine de Normandie (2018), Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires (2017), MALBA, Buenos Aires (2015), Museo Arte Moderno Cuenca (2015), 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Niteroi, Río de Janeiro (2007), 11th Biennale de Lyon (2012), X. Bienal de la Habana, Havanna (2009).