Agosto Machado

Gordon Robichaux is honored to present Agosto Machado’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show follows our 2024 display of the artist’s work at Art Basel Miami Beach and recent acquisitions of Machado’s shrine and altar sculptures by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hessel Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his work is on display in the museum’s permanent collection gallery alongside that of his friends Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, David Wojnarowicz, and Martin Wong.

The installation at Gordon Robichaux features a group of Machado’s artworks exhibited for the first time: a self-portrait painted in the 1960s; a colorful plaster mask created and worn by the artist in numerous theatrical productions in the 1970s; and seven new shrine and altar sculptures which comprise artworks, ephemera, relics, and personal effects collected and preserved by the artist over the course of seven decades.

Alongside Machado’s work, the exhibition incorporates artworks and ephemera by Machado’s peers, among them, a painting by Caroline Goe, tin foil sculptures by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, a portrait of Machado by Uzi Parnes, and a poster for Ethyl Eichlberger’s Medea with photographs by Peter Hujar. Throughout, the installation and artworks evidence Machado’s ongoing archival practice dedicated to remembrance, activism, and community.

A singular figure, Agosto Machado is a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American performance artist, activist, archivist, muse, caretaker, and friend to countless celebrated and underground visual and performing artists. He has been a vital participant and witness to cultural and creative life in New York since the early sixties, from art, theater, performance, and film to social and political counterculture and the dawn of the gay liberation movement. As part of a cohort of queer revolutionaries, including Marsha P. Johnson, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, and Sylvia Rivera, Machado participated in the Stonewall Rebellion.

Machado has presented two solo exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux in New York (2022 and 2025) and will present his first solo show in London at Maureen Paley in January 2025. His work has been featured in group exhibitions including at Greene Naftali, the New York City AIDS Memorial, Candice Madey, and the Flag Art Foundation in New York. His shrine and altar sculptures are held in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Profiles on the artist and his work have been published in The New York Times, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, Candy, ODDA, ARTnews, Wallpaper, Dazed, Paper, Artnet, L’Officiel, and apartamento.

Machado has performed extensively, including with Jack Smith, Ethyl Eichelberger, Stephen Varble, Angels of Light, and The Cockettes, as well as Warhol Superstars Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Mario Montez, and Jackie Curtis. He is a collector of his myriad friends’ work, including the art of Arch Connelly, Gilda Pervin, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Uzi Parnes, Ken Tisa, and Martin Wong and self-taught East Village street artists such as Grady Alexis, Caroline Goe, Miguel "Mikie" Perez, and Tomata du Plenty. He’s been a muse for generations of artists including Lola Flash, Peter Hujar, Jack Pierson, Tabboo!, Collier Schorr, Alice O’Malley, and Ryan McGinley.