FLORENCIA BÖHTLINGK

The pulse of Florencia Böhtlingk’s art beats to the pace of what she sees and experiences as she registers an arc that encompasses landscape, daily life, and activism. Somewhere between what surprises her, what moves her, and what simply keeps her company, on the one hand, and the surface of the paper or the canvas, on the other, she inquires into the forms and colors at play in experience. The challenges posed by technique are in plain sight, reminding us that painting is both a physical and a mental process.

Böhtlingk (Buenos Aires, 1966) is always drawing and sketching; not for an instant does her work lose the vibration of the immediate. The abundance of images in her practice feeds a profuse body of work that is always coherent even as it tackles an array of themes. Her art’s contemporariness is enacted in recognition of multiple pictorial traditions: painting from the Amazon, Torres-García’s constructivism, and the social muralism of the sixties.

Böhtlingk’s earlier work was tied to the local surrealist movement. The numerous watercolors and oil paintings that came later take on the entire ecosystems of the La Plata and Amazon rivers; they form part of the landscape tradition that, in Argentina, stood in opposition to academic and modern approaches to the representation of setting. Böhtlingk’s painting attests to the wild beauty of the jungle and the river region as well we the persistence of extractivist colonial structures and the layers of culture, ethnicity, and religion in the border zone.

Her audiovisual production also engages the marks the human leaves on nature. Her most recent series of paintings introduces speech as well. More specifically, the artist paints the words surrounding her to construct and evidence the sound and semantic landscapes of the brush of Misiones province and the streets of the city in the throes of social movements.

Böhtlingk studied at Escuela de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón and Escuela Ernesto de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires. She attended workshops by artists Jorge Demirján, Luis Felipe Noé and Gabriel Messil. Between 1994-1995, Fundación Proa awarded her a scholarship to attend Guillermo Kuitca´s workshop. She served as a Paiting teacher at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas in Buenos Aires. In 2020, she was an artist in residence at FLORA ars+natur, Colombia.

Florencia Böhtlingk´s works have been the subject of numerous solo shows at Hache galería, Buenos Aires (2022 & 2018); Galería Zavaleta Lab, Buenos Aires (2014); Museo de las mujeres, Ciudad de Córdoba (2011);  Galleria  Blanchaert, Milano (2010);  Galería  Francesco Zanuso, Milano (2009); Galería Dabbah Torrejón, Buenos Aires (2009); Hogar Collection, New York (2007); María Casado Galería, Buenos Aires (2007); Belleza y felicidad, Buenos Aires (2004); Belleza y felicidad, Buenos Aires (2002); Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires (2001).

She has participated in several group exhibitions including: Manifiesto verde, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2023); Del cielo a casa, Museo MALBA, Buenos Aires (2023); Un lento venir viniendo – Capítulo I, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Niterói, Río de Janeiro (2022; Las olas del deseo. Feminismos, diversidades, y cultura visual 2010-2020+, Casa Nacional del Bicentenario, Buenos Aires (2022); Paramí 2 (2021) y Paramí (2020), PM Galería, Buenos Aires; Una historia de la imaginación en Argentina. Visiones de La Pampa, el Litoral y el Altiplano desde el siglo XIX a la actualidad, curated by Javier Villa, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, (2019), ; Amigxs, el futuro es nuestro. 10 años de pintoras, curated by Lara Marmor, Usina del Arte (2019); Pruden, Guerrieri, Böhtlingk, curated by Claudio Iglesias, Galería Sly Zmud, Buenos Aires (2017); Paisaje, el devenir de una idea, Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires (2016); Arellano Bohtlingk Londaibere, Filiaciones, Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2015); Bellos Jueves, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (2014); Política y Belleza de las tareas, Museo Macro, Rosario (2012 ); Pintoras, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires (2012).

Publication of her work include Florencia Böhtlingk. Pinturas 1992-2012, Patricia Rizzo Editora, Buenos Aires (2013);  Misiones (2015)and Río de la Plata (2018), two books of Böhtlingk´s watercolors published by Mansalva, Buenos Aires.

In the past years, Florencia Böhtlingk presented two documentary films: María (2020), a short film about integration and tradition, co-directed along with Gisela Gorbalan, and Los colonos de La Flor [La Flor settlers] (2016), a documentary portrait of a small agricultural and pastoral village in the jungle of Misiones, Argentina. The film has participated in documentary festivals around the world receiving awards and immense recognition.

In 2017, Florencia Böhtlingk received the second prize at Banco Central Award and a third prize at Fondo Nacional de las Artes in 2019.

Work by the artist is part of the permanent collections of the Museo Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, among others.

She lives and works between Buenos Aires and Misiones, Argentina.