Marco Bizzarri (b. 1988, Santiago) is a Chilean artist based in West Sussex, England. He graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a BA in Fine Arts (2014) and cofounded Centro ARC, a new space for art residencies at the Humboldt Archipelago in the Atacama Desert of Chile in 2017. In 2020 he won the Solo Residency at Unit 1 Gallery, London, and studied Painting at Turps Art School in the following year. In 2021 he was invited to High House Residency in Norfolk and the same year he won The de Laszlo Foundation Award and The Gilbert Bayes Award from the Royal Society of Sculptors. He was also one of the five finalists of the First Plinth Public Art Award given by the same institution.
Marco Bizzarri's paintings respond to the exercise of collecting and translating images by delving into the material possibilities of pictorial language. The result combines abstraction and figuration: the images reveal the multiple resources with which they have been constructed. The pictorial image, taken from personal photographs, is constructed from the dynamic between revealing and concealing. The action of covering the surface, through the gesture of sandblasting, is articulated as a way of silencing elements and at the same time charging the composition with a singular graphic and chromatic expression.
Recent solo exhibitions include 'The temple still stands' at Incubator Gallery (London 2023); 'Unearthed' at Unit 1 Gallery Workshop (London 2020) and 'Incuria' at Galería Animal (Chile 2019). Group exhibitions include 'Recursion',The Split Gallery (London, 2023); 'Fauna Presents Auction', Arundel Castle (Arundel, 2023); 'Gilbert Bayes Award Exhibition', Royal Society of Sculptors, Cromwell Place (London, 2022); 'Friends with benefits', Safehouse 2 (London 2022); 'RSS GBA Exhibition',CASC Gallery, University of Chester (Chester, 2022); 'Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition', Mall Galleries (London, 2021); "XIV Premio MAVI arte joven" at MAVI Museum (Chile, 2020); 'Habitantes', Centro Cultural Matta (Argentina,2019); 'Cohabitar', Cede Galería (Perú, 2016); 'Outsider', Gare of Strasbourg (France, 2014) and 'The Young Collectors Exhibition', Leila Heller Gallery (USA, 2013).