Born in Madrid, Spain 1972
The Cooper Union, BFA, 1999
Columbia University, MFA, 2001
Lives and works in New York City
Ernesto Caivano (b. 1972 Madrid, Spain) builds an intricate, dynamic world in ink containing enigmatic landscapes, characters, and happenings that evade traditional narrative structures. His diverse inspirations span eras and genres, from Albrecht Dürer and the Flemish Renaissance to nanotechnology and Modernism. Symbols are cryptic, flora and fauna are at once alien and anthropomorphic, and the combination of mystic and scientific imagery creates an atmosphere of the uncanny. After The Woods is an ever-evolving body of work that is an ongoing exploration of this world. In it, Caivano summons familiar tropes such as knights, maidens, and love’s inevitable triumph—and yet, set against his exquisitely worked backdrop teeming with evocative references, these vignettes take on an otherworldly quality. Caivano slows his narrative every so often to survey specific aspects of this world in microscopic detail. These manifest as collections of drawings that depict his world’s cosmos, plant life, geology, systems of language, and lore.
Caivano’s solo exhibitions include Settlements, Pioneer Works, New York (2013); Echo Gambit, White Cube, London (2008); and After the Woods: A Selection, MoMA PS1, New York (2004). Major group exhibitions include Storylines, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); No New Thing Under The Sun, Royal Academy of the Arts, London (2010); Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action, White Cube, London (2010); Like Color in Pictures, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2007); On Line, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2005); and Whitney Biennial 2004, Whitney Museum, New York (2004). His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, among others.
Caivano received his BFA from Cooper Union, his MFA from Columbia University and lives and works in New York.