Will be Alma Allensculptor born in Utah in 1970 and resident in Mexico for years on the roster of the Kasmin Gallery, representing the United States at the 61st Venice Art Biennaleopening in May 2026. The curatorship will be entrusted to Jeffrey Uslipan independent figure who had directed the Maltese pavilion in 2022. The official announcement will be made public in the coming weeks. But the news has already shaken the system: for once, Washington is focusing on an artist who has made discretion a language and matter a thought. Allen is known for his sculptures in stone, wood and bronzeorganic and archaic forms that seem to breathe, or perhaps disappear, in the space that welcomes them. “My works,” he said, “are often in the act of leaving, of dissolving, of interacting with something invisible. Even if they seem static, they never are.” In these words we read the philosophy of an artist who does not shape matter to dominate it, but to restore its geological memory. Its smooth surfaces, almost anthropomorphic curves, solids and voids are dialogues between nature and consciousness, rather than art objects.
Established in 2017 in Tepoztlana mountain town south of Mexico City, Allen works in a studio-laboratory where an ancient foundry and a robotic machine built by himself coexist. It is there that he melts, sculpts, observes. A dimension that seems very far from the clamor of international fairs and the logic of the American market – and which precisely for this reason makes its choice all the more significant. With him, the United States seems to want to rediscover another idea of representation: not that of cultural power, but that of intimacy and research. Allen’s CV, moreover, does not follow the usual trajectories of the “blue-chip artists” who have recently represented the USA – from Simone Leigh to Jeffrey Gibson, from Joan Jonas to Ed Ruscha. In over thirty years of activity he has only held two major solo museum exhibitions: al Anahuacalli Museum of Mexico City (2023) et al Palm Springs Art Museum (2018). In 2024, ten of his sculptures dotted Park Avenue, New York, in a monumental and silent dialogue with urban architecture. According to rumors, US participation will be supported byAmerican Arts Conservancya new non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American artists in the international context. It is a political as well as aesthetic signal: the State Department’s own public call requested, for this edition, projects that “reflect American values and promote peaceful relations with other nations”.
