A draughtsman by nature, Mateo López operates on a plane wavering between architecture and drawing, teasing the line between two and three-dimensional realms. He believes in the impact of drawing on cultural progress across diverse fields – from architecture and design to education.

Mateo López’s work is mainly determined by the effort of sketching the paths of memory, the constant movement between past and present. This has taken the artist to employ drawing as a method to delineate his own transit within the world. López has focused in how spaces can acquire a subjective quality by means of constant human activity; personal experience is his starting point, referencing both his studio and his apartment, to consider how memory can get affixed to things. By accepting this, the artist has the possibility to map events and anecdotes by establishing relationships between objects. Mateo López reproduces memories and converts them into something susceptible to displacement through the creation of portable modules that host different collections of objects.

Mateo López’s work has been shown internationally, having presented solo exhibitions at MAMBO Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá in Colombia (2018); Blue Project Foundation, Barcelona, Spain (2018); the Drawing Center, New York, United States (2017); Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín, Colombia (2014); The Jerusalem Center for the Visual Arts, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel (2012); Gasworks, London, United Kingdom (2010); and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009).

The artist has also participated in group exhibitions at Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia (2018); Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, United States (2017); The Drawing Room, London, United Kingdom (2015); The Museum of Modern Art MoMA in New York, United States (2013); The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States (2013); 43 Salon Nacional de Artistas, Colombia (2013); Mercosur Biennal, Brazil (2011); and 29 Bienal de Sao Paulo (2010), among others.
In 2012-2013 he was chosen as the Protégé of South African artist William Kentridge for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts program.

López is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States; The Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico; Hochschild Collection, Peru; Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Banco de la República, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia; Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, United States, donated by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and CIFO Collection – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, United States.

Mateo López lives and works in New York, United States.