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About
Syd Krochmalny is an artist whose work explores the intersections of aesthetics, power, desire, and language. Through painting, installation, performance, and text-based works, he creates a bold and multilayered language—both poetic and political—that challenges dominant narratives and expands the possibilities of contemporary art.
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His practice is rooted in the cultural, affective, and symbolic economies of the Global South. From the intimacy of brushstrokes to the force of slogans and manifestos, his works operate across mediums and registers, articulating fiction, irony, and resistance. Whether addressing fragile masculinities, colonial violence, or speculative utopias, Krochmalny moves between monument and intimacy, seduction and critique.
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His projects and lectures have been exhibited at major institutions including Museo Reina Sofía, Harvard University, Americas Society, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and the Guggenheim Museum. He has presented solo shows in New York, San Pablo, and Buenos Aires.
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Krochmalny is the founder of The Slip, an artist-run space in New York City focused on radical perspectives from the Global South. His curatorial and editorial work extends his visual practice into collaborative, discursive, and experimental territories—bridging theory and sensation.
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He holds a PhD in Social Sciences and completed postdoctoral studies at Columbia University. But above all, he believes in the transformative power of images—and in the capacity of art to say what politics and theory cannot.
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Education
2014-2015
Postdoctoral Studies
Columbia University
At Columbia, I investigated how contemporary artists from Buenos Aires navigated the global art world—rewriting identities, adapting aesthetics, and forging new routes of circulation between the Global South and New York. Through a multi-sited ethnography across workshops, museums, and informal circuits, I mapped cultural networks, algorithmic capital, and the symbolic economies that transform crisis into artistic currency. The project explored how art becomes both a language of resistance and a strategy of survival in transnational settings.
2008-2013
P.h.D. Social Sciences & Contemporary Art
University of Buenos Aires
My doctoral research analyzed the transformations of the Argentine art field from the 2001 economic crisis to the progressive governments of the early 2010s. Through a structural and genealogical approach, I explored how artists, curators, institutions, and markets redefined their relationships, forging new aesthetic-political paradigms. The dissertation mapped emerging trajectories, affective economies, and symbolic infrastructures that shaped the post-crisis visual landscape—at the intersection of artistic experimentation, cultural policy, and market expansion.
2006-2008
Master in Communication, Cultura, and Art
University of Buenos Aires
This program allowed me to develop a critical methodology at the crossroads of art theory, cultural politics, and experimental aesthetics. My thesis analyzed how spaces such as El Rojas, Belleza y Felicidad, and Proyecto Venus reshaped the cultural imagination in Argentina by fusing artistic experimentation with political dissent. The research advanced a framework to read artistic gestures as affective dispositifs—capable of disrupting dominant narratives and generating alternative forms of sociability. It also consolidated my approach as both a cultural theorist and an embedded practitioner, blending writing, curating, and intervention.
2002-2005
BA Sociology
University of Buenos Aires
Formed within one of Latin America’s most prestigious intellectual traditions, I studied under leading thinkers who were full professors in the core courses I attended—among them León Rozitchner, Horacio González, Gregorio Klimovsky, Juan Carlos Portantiero, Emilio de Ípola, Rubén Dri, Dora Barrancos, and Ricardo Sidicaro. Their teachings shaped my understanding of subjectivity, ideology, epistemology, feminism, and political culture.
While serving as a junior faculty member and researcher in cultural sociology and phenomenology, I collaborated with Lucas Rubinich, then Director of the Sociology Department, to found Sociología Contraataca—a collective of sociological, artistic, and political action that operated at the intersection of critical theory and experimental practice, both within and beyond the university.
Syd Krochmalny is an artist, theorist, and writer whose work traverses the visual and the textual, merging critical theory, literature, and contemporary art into a singular, embodied practice. Through a sustained inquiry into aesthetics, politics, and memory, he reimagines the artist as an autonomous figure—both poetic and critical—within the cultural field.
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By integrating thought and action, Krochmalny investigates themes of power, representation, language, seduction, desire, and violence. His artistic gestures, marked by transgression and excess, seek to disrupt established structures while forging new modes of collective imagination. His work unfolds at the intersections of materiality and concept, fiction and reality, monument and intimacy, individuality and collectivity, performance and daily life.
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His multimedia creations—ranging from writings, paintings, videos, installations, and performances to sculptures, music, animation, and curatorial projects—have been presented at major institutions including Museo Reina Sofía, Harvard University, Americas Society, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Parque de la Memoria, Centro Cultural Haroldo Conti, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires. His international reach extends to the Guggenheim Museum, the University of Edinburgh, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and the University of Oslo.
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As Director of Barro Gallery in New York (2022–2024) and founder of The Slip (2024–present), an artist-run space in NYC, Krochmalny has promoted institutional innovation and critical reflection within the contemporary art landscape. He has also played a key role in editorial initiatives, co-founding and editing pivotal platforms such as ramona (2006–2010), revista CIA (2011–2017), and revista Jennifer (2016–present), helping shape contemporary debates and bridging theory and practice.
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His literary work spans poetry, essays, novels, and artist books that explore urgent cultural and political themes. Notable publications include El tamaño de mi mundo, ramona: Debates en el arte al filo del milenio, Diarios del Odio, Débil, and Sueños, published by leading houses such as Caja Negra, Mansalva, and n direcciones. His writing delves into the poetics of hate speech, the commodification of masculinity, male sex work, fragile masculinities in post-patriarchal contexts, and the afterlives of psychoanalytic and photomontage traditions in postwar Argentina. He also revives forgotten poetic movements through speculative narratives that blend archival rigor and imaginative fiction, blurring boundaries between ethnography and poetry, history and invention.
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Krochmalny holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and completed postdoctoral research at Columbia University. He served as Pedagogical Director of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas in Buenos Aires (2009–2019), where his teaching and mentorship shaped a generation of artists and scholars across Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia.
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A founding member of Sociología Contraataca (2008–2015), a collective of artists and sociologists at the University of Buenos Aires, Krochmalny developed projects that bridged social science and experimental aesthetics. The group’s work fused performance, multimedia, and relational practices, expanding the scope of both disciplines through creative research.
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Since 2024, he has served on the interdisciplinary committee of the Memorial for Those Who Did Not Fall in War (MNW) at Columbia University’s Global Center for Peace Innovation. There, he contributes to reimagining the war memorial as a symbol of ecological justice in the 21st century. Through the MNW Art Gallery, he fosters dialogues at the intersection of art, ecology, and peacebuilding, curating exhibitions and programs that address military pollution, cultural loss, and planetary survival.
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At The Slip, Krochmalny has created a dynamic platform for contemporary art rooted in global perspectives—especially those from the Global South. With a focus on collaboration, historical reimagination, and social transformation, The Slip hosts exhibitions, public programs, and residencies that challenge conventional narratives and expand the possibilities of art in society.
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He is also a member of La Internacional Argentina, a collective of artists and researchers dedicated to illuminating the contributions of Argentine culture to global art. The initiative fosters transnational dialogue and reinserts local perspectives into broader contemporary discourses.
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