Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is very pleased to announce the exhibition of selected works from the ‘70s by Marie Orensanz. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.

Marie Orensanz began her artistic career studying painting with two of the foundational artists of Argentine Modernism: Emilio Pettoruti and Antonio Seguí. An active member of the art scene in Buenos Aires in the 1960s and 1970s, she participated in the exhibitions and cultural activities organized by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, and she was involved with the Centro de Arte y Comunicación. In 1972, she moved to Milan. The proximity to Carrara and its marble quarries sparked her early production in stone. She has continued to work with fragments of marble, making them into books and sculptures, since the 1970s.

In 1975, Orensanz moved to Paris, eventually becoming a naturalized French citizen. Three years later, she wrote a “Manifesto of Fragmentism,” in which she outlined the conceptual basis of her works, many of which are deeply informed by the practice of drawing. Written in Spanish, English, and French, the Manifesto reads: “Fragmentism searches for the integration of the part into a whole, transformed by its multiple readings, into an unfinished and unlimited object through time and space”.

“The incomplete is a constant of my work, Orensanz says, and I try that everything is not limited to one single idea (polysemy). I feel that we are all receivers and transmitters of them. I think that we are all fragments of a whole and at the same time, we are part of a past and of a future. All the videos, the fragmented marbles, and other works are united by “incompletion”. Fragmentism is an open discourse.”

Marie Orensanz has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, Latin American and the United States.

Since the mid-1980s, Orensanz has completed several public works, including installations at Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires, the Lycée Blanc-Mesnil in Paris, the Universidad San Martín in Buenos Aires, and the Musée National des Sciences, des Techniques et des Industries in Paris.

Her works are included in many institutional collections, amongst them the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (Mamba), Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (MACRO), and, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (MNBA), all them in Argentina. In France, at Centre Pompidou (CMAM), Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris and Fondation Camille. Also, at the Bremen Museum in Germany; Centre fur Kunst, Vaduz, Liechtenstein; Musée Latino-Americain, Martinique; as well as in numerous private collections.

Marie Orensanz lives and works between Buenos Aires and Paris.