Carlos Huffmann

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1980

            In each of his drawings and paintings of varying scale, in his sculptures and assemblages arranged in both public and private spaces, and in his installations scattered throughout space, Huffmann returns again and again to the problem of the tension between man and technology. His work frequently presents the encounter of the human in a state of flux with the stubborn resistance of the devices that surround and shape him. This experimentation and elaboration of a crossing—through monstrous aggregation or machinic alliance—results in compositions marked by an imaginary density, as if each of his works were imbued with a multitude of narrative threads that project backward into the artist's past and cultural consumption, but also stretch toward the future as extravagant visions where dystopia coexists with desire.

            In this sense, beneath the apparent disorder and grotesqueness of his works, Huffmann proves to be a prodigious collagist who, by activating the ruinous and obsolete, produces objects and images endowed with a strange and powerful quality. In front of them, it is impossible to determine whether we are looking at remnants of already extinct civilizations or encountering a conjectural, evolved species, naturally derived from our hypertrophied technological present, in which the relationships and boundaries between man and technology, nature and artifice, are increasingly blurred. Thus, ecological disaster, but also the aberrant, marginal, and dazzling survival of life forms, runs through the core of the artist’s poetic vision.

            In addition to his work as an artist, Carlos Huffmann has developed a career as a writer, curator, and educator. Trained at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, he also earned a degree in Business Economics from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. From 2018 to 2024, he was director of the Art Department at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. His work has been exhibited in various galleries in Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, and has also been included in the Asunción Biennial (2015) and the Curitiba Biennial (2015).