Bernardo Ortiz lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. He studied Art at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá and then achieved a Master’s Degree in Philosophy at Universidad del Valle in Cali. His works was presented in an international exhibition at MAMBA (Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires) 2016, Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, Australia, 2016), Biennial of the Americas (Denver, USA, 2015), 43º Salón Internacional de Artistas (Medellín, Colombia), XXX Bienal de São Paulo (Brazil, 2012), XI Bienal de Lyon (Francia,2011) Ephemeroptarae (Austria, 2013), Game Piece (Noruega, 2013) and MDE 07 (Colombia, 2007).

Ortiz was co-curator of the 7th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and of the 41 Salón Nacional de Artistas (Cali, Colombia). Bernardo Ortiz’s art works revolve around the words, drawings and symbolic meanings that compose a dialogue with the time and with its effects and events. Thanks to his education of philosophy and his knowledge of literature, he investigates the connection, always tense, between the written word and the painting or the drawing, by using colors, typographies or textures. The bidimensional surfaces in his works integrates the overlaps with materials, text and folds.

Being looked over, these pieces show some decontextualized sentences through which the artist tries to relate images and language, making it evident that words can evoke an image, but they also can work as pictorial objects by themselves. His works are a part of important collections such as Colección Lara, Tate Modern Collection, London, UK, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA, CNAP Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany; Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, New York, USA; Museo de arte Moderno la Tertulia, Cali, Colombia, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France; Bank of the Republic, Colombia and private collections in USA, Brazil, England and Colombia.

CV BERNARDO ORTIZ