Throughout his work, Ivens Machado associated the brutality of matter with primordial biological tensions and constructive solutions drawn from vernacular architecture. The retrieval of obsolete construction materials and the deliberate unfinishing of his pieces likens them to ruined bodies, linked to organic and naturalistic allusions. Iron, broken glass, concrete and debris as compositional elements form an attack on the supposed purity of art after modernism. During the military dictatorship, the artist also produced filmed performances that stage torture, racial conflict and mummification, configuring a violently political aspect of his practice, in which connotations of paralysis, exhaustion and concealment are brought to the fore. Machado’s process also extends into drawings that record the dismantling of ruled notebooks’ gridded structure with corrosive substances, submitting the pictorial support to a tactic of sabotage. In all of his work we have a circuit established between the human body, in its constitutive vulnerability, and the body of sculpture, in its inherent instability.

Among his recent solo exhibitions are Tucci Russo, Torino, 1983, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023); Ivens Machado, MON – Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil (2019); Ivens Machado, Andrew Krepps Gallery, New York, USA (2019); Corpo e Construção, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2018); Ivens Machado, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2016); O Cru do Mundo, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2016). The artist took part in the group shows Diagonais, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); 1981–2021 Arte Contemporânea Brasileira na Coleção Andrea e José Olympio Pereira, CCBB – Centro Cultural do Banco do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2021); Chão de giz, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); Building Material: Process and Form in Brazilian Art, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, USA (2017); On the Edge: Brazilian Film Experiments of the 1960s and Early 1970s, MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, Nova York, USA (2014).

The artist has works in important public collections, such as Blanton Museum of Art – The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA; Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; MAC – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Niterói, Brazil; MAC USP – Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; MAB – Museu de Arte de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Palazzo Di Lorenzo, Gibellina, Italy and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.