Jaguar Quindío

Fundraising Edition

Jaguar Quindío by Mateo López is a 2022 Center for Book Arts’ Fundraising Edition. By acquiring this work you are supporting Center for Book Arts’ community and contributing to our educational and exhibition programs.

López’s work engages with cartographies, journeys and construction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. Viewed one way, the face of a jaguar from the Quindió region of Columbia is visible; viewed another the pattern evokes a bird.

Mateo López (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) is an artist who trained as an architect and uses organic forms, film and dance in his practice.

He studied architecture for two years at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá before switching to Visual Arts at Bogotá’s Universidad de Los Andes.

López’s work engages with cartographies, journeys and con-struction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. His practice traces a conceptual ap-proach, expanding from drawings to installations, architecture, films and sculptural choreography. Key international solo exhibitions include Sin Principio / Sin Final Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogota, Colombia (2018); Undo List, The Drawing Center, New York, USA (2017); A Weed is a Plant Out of Place, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland (2016) and Deriva at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009). Important group exhibitions include United States of Latin America, curated by Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA (2015); A Trip from Here to There, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2013) and Ha sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar, 29 Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2010).

Major awards and residencies include the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. William Kentridge’s Protégé, Geneva Switzerland in 2012 and the Gasworks Residency Program, London, UK in 2010, which was followed by an exhibition.

López’s work can be found in public collections around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Banco de la República, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia, Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY.