André Magaña’s work draws on historical works of Mexican art history to describe the oft-contradictory realities and comedies of Mexican-American experience and his own identity. 

His sculptures, generated in CAD software and then 3D-Printed before applying various surface treatments, are generated in conversation with pre-columbian ceramics from Colima, Mexico, a red clay-rich state in which his family is based. By pursuing object making traditions through contemporary means of production Magaña preserves cultural information through the capital-driven mechanisms that implicitly look to erase it. 

His work incorporates “Hispanic” pop culture, and consumables as a strategy to bridge intergenerational symbolism and object languages. In some ways flattening, but in others enriching the significance of his source material, Magaña breaks down the psychological border within the colonized body by allowing pre- and post- colonial imagery to play in the same space. 

André Magaña (b. 1992, Lagunitas, CA) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent solo and two-person presentations include Kings Leap, New York, NY; Prairie, Chicago, IL; MONACO, St Louis, MO; Holding Contemporary, Portland, OR; and American Medium, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include In Practice 2021 at Sculpture Center, Queens, NY; SORBUS, Helsinki, FI; VACATION, New York, NY; Hotel Art Pavillion, Brooklyn, NY; Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT; and Alyssa Davis, New York, NY. He presented work at NADA Miami Beach 2019 with Magenta Plains (New York), NADA’s FAIR 2020 with Hotel Art Pavillion (Connecticut) and MECA Fair in San Juan, PR with HOUSING (NY) He was a resident at Triangle Arts Association in Fall of 2020.