Biography
I was born in BuenosAires, Argentina in 1966. I’m a Biologist from the School of Exact and Natural Sciences, Buenos Aires University –UBA-. During my scientific activity, I started my artistic formation attending private ateliers, work analysis meetings and art seminaries (painting: Carlos Gorrinera, drawing: Ernesto Pesce, photography: Alberto Goldenstein, etc.)
The type of work I’ve been developing in the last years is linked to my scientific practice, thinking on it as a production mechanism and knowledge validation. In 2001 I realized a solo show in the Arte x Arte gallery named Self-dissection [Autodisección], in which the scientist is self-transformed in his own studying object. In 2002 I think about the relation patient - doctor / lab-rat – researcher and this will give birth to the Dr. Rat concept in a solo show called Register [Registro] at the General San Martín Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In the SIC [SIC] exhibition, in 2003 León Ferrari, Pablo Lapadula, Cecilia Costantini/Andres Toro carried at the Barber shop Vol., curated by De Volder, Brizuela and Dal Verme, I start working in the idea locked in scientific didactics. In 2004 I develop taxonomy or survey of all those things a biologist likes seeing through the microscope and this first material is part of the individual exhibition Lab Sample [Muestra de laboratorio] at the Palais de Glace (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In 2005, toghether with Juana Neuman, we produced the exhibition Evolution [Evolución] in the Natural Sciences Museum, where we call 90 artists to work on a red process of an evolving idea in a museum context.
Other solo exhibitions: Milion Art Gallery: Recipe[Receta], 2000. Recoleta Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina): Amazonia Accident [Accidente amazónico], 1994. Brazilian Studies Center, Cultural are from Brazil’s Embassy: Amazonia [Amazonia], 1993. Some collective exhibitions: You are here ¬/ some Thursday, on Sunday [Usted esta aquí / Algún Jueves, un Domingo]. Cultural House, Cultural Department. Artist group Subscription [Suscripción], 2004. Pulling Hair, 3ºPart [Tirado de los Pelos.Vol. 3], L.Ferrari, C. Antoniadis, Beto de Volver, etc. 2003. ARTEBA: Recollecting Area., 2004. MALBA (Museum of Latin-American Art in Buenos Aires), 11º Contermporary [Contemporaneo11], The recolection [La Re-Colección], 2003. 2001 finalist for the Antorchas Foundation Grant Abroad (calling in 200 to participate in 2002) for the Dutch Rijksakademie Van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. I’ve participated in the 2003, 1995 y 1992National Awards. Manuel Belgrano 1997, 1996, 1994 y 1993 Awards, and in the Second Young Art Biennale, 1991.
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
‘Does this Mosquitos become fluorescent?’ [¿Estos mosquitos fluorecen?] Acrylic on glass. 60 x 20cm, 2004. The photography shows the exact moment in which white mosquitoes painted on a glass rectangular piece become fluorescent by being crossed by a beam of light to its tangential plane. Give the transparent of the artwork, its visual expression changes depending on its spacial ubication and the quality of light it gets. In this piece I worked on the visual and conceptual potentiality that I could reach with minimum visual resources: Transparent support, one only hue (white), minimized stroke gesture and the narrative by a simple group of mosquitoes. I choose this work for the contrast between its visual simplicity and its complicated production procedure, which involves aspects far from painting itself: the portrayed mosquitoes were ”my mosquitoes”, stuffed with my blood because I caught them without killing them while they were biting me in my river near-by house. I moved them into the city and in my studio I took pictures of them with the use of a beam of light and black and white photographic paper, without camera or photographic film, getting, in that way, mosquitoe’s photograms. This photograms where used as “negatives” to get the final picture by drawing on the glass rectangle with acrylic paint. Once I’ve painted on the glass, and inspired in the Brazilian artist’s (Eduardo Kac)fluorescent tarnsggenic rabbit (when it was illuminated by UV light, created in a French lab) I enlighten the mosquitoes portraits with tangential light with the astonishment to see how this were brought to life by becoming fluorescent in the same way the complicated rabbit did.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
Understand that the presented pieces are small “atomic” units which all together conform a molecular structure with multiple growth direction, with a starting point in the conceptual context that men use trying to learn the biological world that that surrounds him and conforms him. In the end this is all just a bunch od excuses to create my own, subjective, cryptically, emotional and self-referred science museum. An experimental museum based in the imprecision of speech and method.
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
Contemporary art, taking and leaving everything that helps me translate an idea, I don’t try to foresee the way one of my productions will fit in the artistic field. Contemporary referents: Marcel Broodthaers, Sarah Ze, Mark Dion, León Ferrari, Claes Oldenburg, Demian Hirsh, Susan Hiller, Cristian Boltanski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dennis Oppenheim, Atelier Van Lieshout, Marina Abramovic, Semefo, Eduardo Kac, Pablo Suárez, Cindy Sherman, Araki, Roberto Jacoby. Other generation’s referents: Picabia, Duchamp, Redon, Beuys, Warhol, Klein, De Kooning, Greco, Bacon.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
León Ferrari’s retrospective at the Recoleta Cultural Center. To see the path he’s travelled and drawn with the development of his production, eclectic, coherent, powerful. Pablo Suarez at Daniel Maman gallery, 2004. Great visual imapct, humor, and explicit social message, but no contradiction between each other. The Art Tao [El Tao del Arte], Recoleta Cultural Center, show that made the 90’s argentine contemporary art an institution. Kuitka at Malba. First chance to see a complete exhibition of a contemporary argentine artists internationally recognized and of great impact in the national art scene. Grippo at Malba, you can see the thinking axis of a conceptual argentine artist. Specially, the relation between art and a hard science such as chemistry. Liliana Porter at Recoleta Cultural Center. I like the way she interconnected her production trough time.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
From the art movement that started in the Rojas Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina) in the end of the military period, which sets the context to start talking about contemporary national art and strengthens with the so calles 90’s generation. Within this new art movement, now established as an almost hegemonic national art ramifications are beginning to emerge that have no terms of trends.
