Who are the foreigners
in this succession of never broken glass,
in this homeland of fragments, of mirrors,
where we don’t know
what is the reflection
whom the reflected.
-Patricio Loizaga (1954-2006)
This poem, a turning point in my art journey, resonated with the art curator who saw my images mirroring his verses. His belief blossomed into my work gracing his book cover and my first solo exhibition in New York.
The poem also echoes my challenging upbringing in Argentina, where I felt fragmented by demanding family burdens and my personal quest in finding the voice of my soul: Photography.
As a young adult, I’ve been influenced by how Escher and Vasarely explored human perception, how Asimov and Borges challenged reality, and how Pollock represented emotions.
In my thirties, I began my journey as a world immigrant hopping between Miami, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, which ultimately deepened my appreciation for diversity and the ever-shifting reality I now explore in the Bay Area in California.
My work explores the gap between perception and the illusion of reality. By frequently focusing on impermanent reflections in water or mirrors, I challenge viewers to question how their personal biases and experiences shape their understanding of the world. By recognizing that reality is always subjective and the truth is relative to a point of view, we can cultivate dialogue and foster empathy.
Shooting in RAW format helps my creative process by preserving more details and colors, and have a higher dynamic range and wider color gamut than other file types like JPEG, allowing me to adjust contrast, brightness, white balance, color saturation, and tonal range without affecting the quality. The resulting “edited” image is often a new reality based on a cityscape, a landscape, or abstract incorporating elements of surrealism, geometry, high contrast and the realities and diversities of human life.
“From the beginnings of the universe, travels and journeys have marked human beings. Even when confronted with the unknown, such travels have an implicit dream. For Marcelo Chechik, his journey to the United States has left a deep imprint in their work, not only for the meaning itself of confronting a new culture (so frequently sublimated) but also for the uprooting and abandonment implied in it. Taking into account all the places, images, smells, etc., it has accumulated with experience, the brain finds parallels almost as an obligation and an unconscious task. “…” It’s inevitable to find common points with the individual reality immigrants come from. That is why some of Marcelo’s photographs turn the Vietnam monument into the protagonist of his work to establish a parallel with the obelisk dedicated to the soldiers fallen in the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) war. In his photographs, Marcelo seeks to reflect the spontaneous and ephemeral reality using the richness offered by the image at the very moment it has been shot, without manipulating it.”
Marisol Martell, Art Nexus Magazine
www.artnexus.com/karina-and-marcelo-chechik
Marcelo´s photographic images and video installations of New York’s skyscrapers and Washington´s historical monuments acquire, within the context of the exhibition, a new powerful meaning. His approach questions ideals of freedom, security, and economic prosperity that can no longer be taken for granted.
Their current work also quotes John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Emma Lazarus, and guides us to a new critical dimension, an emotional one that touches us all. Although the dreams still exist, they must be seen from a different perspective in this exhibition.
His work is a deep and sensitive reflection (as reflejo and/or reflexión) of the gap they perceive among the symbols, the expectations, and the realities of a promised land.”
Francine Birbragher, curator of Frost Art Museum
“Like all Argentinians that I have met, the Chechiks regard Borges as their great thinker. In their current body of work not only is Borges quoted but also John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Emma Lazarus. The Chechiks have shown me that there is a relationship between Borges with our great thinkers. Borges speaks of the journey as a labyrinth in which there are no definitive answers. He suggests that discovering the realities is part of the dream. Thank you, Karina and Marcelo, your research was unparalleled. It is ironic that your exhibition opens May 25th, Independence Day for Argentina, and closes July 4th, Independence Day for the United States. Your efforts remind us that there can be a dream in this promised land.”
Bernice Steinbaum, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery
“Marcelo Chechik explores the relationship between man and his visual environment, most specifically large buildings, through the use of his photography. As is witnessed in this exhibition, mirrors and reflection have a considerable place in his work. The reflected light and shadows give the architecture a sense of pulse. Wherever his buildings are photographed, this artist finds another dimension for them, one connected to his Argentine roots. His photographic eye connects the remembrances of the edifices at home with those of a variety of metropolises.”
Michael McManus, Curator Terrace Gallery, Orlando City Hall – Orlando, FL.
“Angled edges of skyscrapers blend into the slopes and curves of fuzzy clouds in Marcelo Chechik’s art exhibit at The Ned. The Argentinean photographer’s works feature ornate, old-world architecture and sleek, shiny modern buildings in New York City. Some of the pieces feature double images or distorted reflections. “
Kim Thomas, Art Critic, The Jackson Sun Jackson, Tennessee, TN.
“Marcelo Chechik’s work explores the relationship between man and the visual environment. For Chechik, reality is always a point of view to a perspective. Chechik’s portrayals of large cities and buildings explore the ideas of perception, essence and contradictions. “
Euridice Miranda, Curator, Broward County Main Library Fort Lauderdale, FL.
“Intriguing photographer Marcelo Chechik engages himself with relations between reality and illusion as revealed through modem buildings’ glass facades.”
Philip E. Bishop, Art Critic, Orlando Sentinel – Orlando, FL
Marcelo Chechik is an Argentinean visual artist established in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2018 after living in Buenos Aires, Miami, and Sao Paulo. He studied Architecture, and Graphic design at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also studied Film and Video Production with Rodolfo Hermida.
His work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, universities, and international art fairs in the United States, South America, and Europe.
Some of his solo exhibitions include: “Images of New York” at New York University -King Juan Carlos of Spain Center (NYC), “Marcelo Chechik Photographs” at Beech River Heritage Museum (Tennessee,TN), ”Multiverses” at Hebraica Gallery (São Paulo), “The Journey to the promised land” in collaboration with Karina Chechik at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (Miami), and “Chechik/Chechik” at Jackson State Community College (Jackson,TN).
Selected group shows include: “By Degrees: Art and our Changing Ecology” at the Huntington Beach Art Center (Huntington Beach, CA), Bienal “Reflexão Arte Hoje” (São Paulo), “Imago Mundi Collection” at Laura Haber Gallery (Buenos Aires), “Four from Argentina” at the Orlando City Hall (Orlando, FL), “Argentina 2002” at the Broward County Main Library (Miami), PARTE Art Fair (São Paulo), Art Takes New York (NYC), CasaFOA (Buenos Aires), and Scope Art Fair during Miami Art Week.
Marcelo, in collaboration with his sister Karina Chechik, was invited by Ediciones Polígrafa in Barcelona to create a series of lithographs. These works were subsequently showcased at prominent art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, ARCO Madrid, and Art Cologne.
His Video installations have been exhibited at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (Miami), Oolite Arts (Miami Beach), East Tennessee State University (Johnson City, TN), Arte BA, Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires Photo, and San Martin Cultural Center (Buenos Aires). He also created Video Art portraits based on other artists works such as Wolfgang Luh (Germany), Karen Rifas (USA), Karina Chechik (Argentina), Jesús Marcos (Spain), Manuela Pintos Tezanos (Argentina), Arturo Mosquera (USA), and Al-Andaluz Flamenco (Argentina).
marcelochechik.com was selected by The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation to be included in its Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Art Web Archive, as a notable contemporary Latin American artist. The Archive is an initiative developed by art and architecture librarians at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, Yale Universities, and the Universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania.
Chechik was awarded First Prize in the Coca Cola in the Arts in the category of video installations and First Prize at the Bienal Reflexão Arte Hoje in São Paulo. He has been represented by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami and ROOM 8 Gallery in São Paulo.
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