Cecilia Biagini’s Poetic Abstractions Resonate from Buenos Aires to Brooklyn

Born in Buenos Aires in 1967, Biagini brings some of the finer elements of Argentine creative traditions to New York, the city where she has been living and working since 1998. Among Latin American cities, Buenos Aires is a cultural capital, a literary city, known for Borges and bookshops, and a proudly artistic one—the street art scene is one of the most talked-about on the continent. Biagini’s work in her newest show, “Abstract Rationale”—shaped and motivated by fields from philosophy and poetry to mathematics and physics—is a reflection of her cultural heritage. 

Indeed, “abstract” is a key term when it comes to understanding Biagini’s latest paintings. As she once wrote, “My work lies in an abstract model where an intuitive poetic field seeks a path of engagement for ideas to converge, convey and define upon internalized universal truths that acknowledge and unveil the uniqueness of experience for singular [or] individual consciousness.” In “Abstract Rationale,” these truths and ideas are expressed in styles ranging from comparatively simple and linear, as in Tuttle (2014), to busy and patterned, as in Mass movement (2014). Other pieces, such as the mixed-media Angular Moment (2015) or Body Matter (2014), are more like images of modern sculptures translated into wood panels.