Esteban Patiño

Esteban Patiño is a Colombian visual artist born in Medellín and based in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied at the Instituto de Bellas Artes and Universidad Nacional in Medellín before moving to the United States. Working across sculpture, collage, painting, and murals, he explores how language is created, communicated, and understood. His practice considers the relationship between a symbol and its interpretation, examining how familiar-looking forms can suggest meaning while remaining open to different readings.

At the centre of this investigation is an invented alphabet built from six basic shapes, each rotated into four positions to produce twenty-four characters. Patiño arranges these symbols into structures resembling text, palindromes, speech bubbles, and accumulations of language. Their apparent familiarity invites viewers to search for a message, making the act of interpretation part of the work. Repetition, orientation, and placement become tools for exploring the possibilities and limitations of communication.

His sculptures translate this vocabulary into sinuous forms and repeating systems, while his paintings develop intuitive compositions that sometimes suggest figures or mythical beings. An interest in Surrealism, anthropology, and early human mark-making informs these experiments. Ancient cave paintings and contemporary pictographs provide reference points for his investigation of symbols that communicate across cultures. Throughout the work, abstraction and recognisable imagery remain closely connected, allowing forms to move between different possible identities.

Collage introduces another approach to assembling meaning. Using fragments from advertisements, street signage, posters, and art magazines, Patiño constructs imaginary creatures and humanlike figures from the visual material around him. During his residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin, he gathered found imagery to create portraits informed by encounters with people and the city’s changing streetscape. These compositions connect personal observation with shared visual culture, transforming discarded images into characters with unfamiliar identities.

Patiño’s work has been exhibited at the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art. His practice includes residencies at GlogauAIR, the Hambidge Center, and Georgia College, alongside exhibitions at Spalding Nix Fine Art in Atlanta. His work is held in collections including the High Museum of Art, Fulton County Arts & Culture, and the Microsoft Corporate Art Collection, reflecting the reach of his ongoing exploration of visual language.

Esteban Patiño’s complete catalog available upon request.