Alejandro Ospina: Magical Thinking

Ministry of Nomads is pleased to present Magical Thinking, an online exclusive selection of recent works by Alejandro Ospina (b.1970). Ospina is a Colombian artist based in Bogotá. He studied Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, before completing his MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. His work has been exhibited internationally, with shows across Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

Ospina’s practice explores the evolving relationship between traditional painting techniques and the overwhelming influx of digital imagery. In previous works developed in Algorithms, he incorporated the drawings of renowned draughtsmen—Gorky, Miró, Mondrian, Poussin, Kandinsky, Twombly—embedding them into layered compositions alongside images sourced from the vast, fast-moving world of the internet. His paintings engage with the transformation of image consumption in the digital age, reflecting on the "white noise" of visual information that defines contemporary life.

Ospina’s paintings reflect the shifting nature of how we focus and absorb information in a world increasingly shaped by speed and visual overload. His works mirror the way our attention moves through the endless flow of digital content—collecting, transforming, and layering visual fragments in a constant state of flux. 

Each painting becomes a layered surface, or palimpsest, capturing the emotional and mental weight of this fast-changing landscape. The Internet serves as both material and metaphor in his work, endlessly reshaping our sense of space and time. Through intricate, meticulously constructed compositions, Ospina reimagines digital imagery and tools as a way to explore how technology reshapes the way we see, interpret, and relate to the visual world around us.