César López

Biography

César López (b. 1991, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala) is an artist whose sophisticated sculptural practice explores the complex systems of global migration and their impact on identity. A graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, López is currently pursuing his MFA in Sculpture at Yale University.

Core to López’s practice is the distillation of his own migratory pattern into a recurring visual motif. This single, elegant curve, derived from graphing a journey on the surface of a globe, becomes the foundational building block for his sculptural language. In his hands, industrial materials like aluminum are transformed into elegant, structural forms that shift between functioning as surrogate globes, abstract maps, and personal navigational tools. At the heart of his practice is a deep intellectual and formal investigation into how abstract systems shape our personal histories.

López’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. He has exhibited at institutions including the Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ulrich Museum of Art (forthcoming), and at galleries such as Calderón (New York). His first solo exhibition with Gallery Bogart, Equidistant, was held in 2023.