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[title]From August through December, Colección Rivarola – El Local presents a program bringing together memory, landscape, textile art, photography, painting and contemporary experimentation in one of Buenos Aires’ most distinctive cultural spaces.
Crossing Pasaje Rivarola feels like discovering a fold in the heart of Buenos Aires. Just steps from the frenetic pace of Microcentro, time seems to slow down among centuries-old façades, quiet galleries and an urban scale that invites you to wander without rushing. It is one of those places that many porteños pass through without realizing that, behind one of its doors, there is a small universe devoted to contemporary art.
This is where Colección Rivarola – El Local comes in, a platform that moves beyond the traditional gallery format to become a meeting point for artists, disciplines and perspectives. Each exhibition offers a different experience, but they all share the same purpose: to make art into an intimate conversation capable of awakening memories, questions and new ways of seeing the world.
A look at the upcoming exhibitions
August: Memory and Nature
The second-half program confirms that spirit. From August through December, painting, photography, drawing, collage, ceramics, textile art, sumi-e and interdisciplinary projects come together in a journey where memory, childhood, landscape, color and imagination take center stage.
The season began on August 8 with Fallacies of Memory, by Eduardo Markarian, an exhibition in which memories are deliberately rearranged to create a universe of surrealist echoes.
Playing cards, literature and images from childhood intertwine like fragments of an original scene: a child watches adults play from the edge of a table, surrounded by smoke, cards and conversations they are not yet able to understand. Guillermo Tell, Molly Bloom and Joyce’s Ulysses also become part of this imaginary world, in a work that frees memory from any chronological obligation.
On August 18, CODA opens, bringing together different groups of artists and offering a journey through multiple artistic languages.
One of its sections is TRAZAS, featuring Trazas de lo vivo, by Daniel Ackerman, Karin Espósito and Laura B. Gutiérrez. Photography and textile art converge here to create a sensitive contemplation of nature. While photography engages with the landscape through its own materiality, the collaborative work of Espósito and Gutiérrez draws on Japanese aesthetics and interdisciplinary practices to explore processes, materials and other ways of looking, feeling and creating.
Also part of CODA is La Dualidad, by Laren, Benski and Marti, a project that starts from the tensions between light and shadow, black and white, high and low to discover everything that happens between the extremes. Rather than an opposition, the exhibition proposes a territory of nuances where different artists come together in a shared search for the Beautiful, the Good and the True.
The third section is Hilo Azul, featuring Patricia Ackerman, Carina Montemurro, Judith Giani and Rita Simoni. Here, blue ceases to be merely a color and becomes a state of contemplation, a space where memory, introspection and mystery coexist. As a preview, Simoni presents Geometrías orgánicas, a series of 21 wooden frames combining painting, sculpture and ceramics. Bark, traces and geometric shapes seem to expand beyond the plane, creating a work with a powerful material presence.
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September: Music, Design and Childhood
On September 4, it will be the turn of Ricky Crespo and Claudio Roncoli with COVER, an exhibition curated by Luciana García Belbey that explores the intersections between music, graphic design and visual art through a central idea: reinterpretation as a form of creation.
In Bibliothèque, Crespo imagines an impossible library where songs no longer last three minutes but become novels that were never written. Musical titles are transformed into fictional book covers through aged papers, period typography and a carefully crafted editorial aesthetic. The result is an emotional archive where nostalgia meets imagination and every song opens the door to a possible story.
Roncoli, meanwhile, takes iconic jazz album covers and turns them into new images shaped by his own pictorial language. Color, geometry, texture and layering become tools for dismantling and rebuilding these references, which cease to be simple album covers and instead become visual memories, cultural objects and spaces for experimentation. A visual artist, musician and producer, Roncoli brings music and image together as parts of the same creative universe.
On September 17, Verónica Martínez Castro opens El cielo redondo, a series that revisits childhood without resorting to literal reconstruction. Old photographs, sheet music, textiles, cut-out words and altered papers create a universe where emotion takes precedence over factual detail. Circles—moons, seeds, toys and planets—run throughout the work as symbols of what remains even as time transforms our memories. Here, collage appears not only as a technique, but as a way of preserving our capacity for wonder.
October and November: Landscape, Fashion and Material
The program continues on October 6 with Patrick Glascher, together with PRAXIS, and his exhibition El territorio es uno mismo. His large-scale graphite drawings depict rivers, seas, mountains and deltas to create landscapes that function as metaphors for the inner world. Moving between observation and fiction, representation and imagination, the works offer a contemplative experience in which territory ultimately becomes a question about the self.
On October 27, Pablo Ramírez, one of the leading figures in Argentine fashion, will take over the space. His creative universe finds in textile art a natural field for experimentation.
On November 17, it will be the turn of Fernanda Cohen and Cecilia Nigro. Cohen works on Renée, exploring the expression of an intimate and enduring inner world where needs, desires and whims coexist. Through paper, geometry and drawing, she seeks to explore fragility, balance and the connection between body, mind and soul.
Nigro explores ceramics as a territory of constant transformation, where layers, textures and materials interact to create works shaped by movement, time and matter.
December: A Collective Finale
The season will close on December 8 with Fiesta de artistas, a project curated by Gustavo Averbuj, Mariana Jasper and Mariela Ivanier. Conceived almost as a manifesto, the exhibition invites visitors to think of art as a possible gift: choosing a work to live alongside, inhabit and allow to remain a companion long after the end-of-year celebrations.
Because, ultimately, that is the true charm of this hidden spot in the heart of Buenos Aires: you don’t need to be a collector or an expert to enjoy it. All you need to do is let yourself be carried away by a song turned into a book, a graphite-drawn landscape, a childhood memory or a shade of blue that seems to contain every silence. Stepping inside is like discovering an oasis. Leaving means returning to the city with the feeling that you have found one of those secrets that are still worth sharing.
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Save the Dates
Currently on view
- Eduardo Markarian — Fallacies of Memory
August 18
- CODA (Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 3pm–7pm. Saturdays and Sundays, 11am–7pm.)
-Trazas de lo vivo, by Daniel Ackerman, Karin Espósito and Laura B. Gutiérrez
-La Dualidad, by Laren, Benski and Marti
-Hilo Azul, featuring Patricia Ackerman, Carina Montemurro, Judith Giani and Rita Simoni
September 4
- Ricky Crespo and Claudio Roncoli
September 17
- Verónica Martínez Castro — El cielo redondo
October 6
- Patrick Glascher + PRAXIS — El territorio es uno mismo
October 27
- Pablo Ramírez
November 17
- Fernanda Cohen and Cecilia Nigro
December 11, 12 and 13, and December 18, 19 and 20
- Fiesta de artistas
More information at Colección Rivarola – El Local.