Biography
I was born on July 15th, 1948, in Posadas, Misiones, Argentina. I lived there until I was 12, and then I moved to Buenos Aires to study at the Colegio Nacional.
I’ve had quite a self-taught education, but I did attend workshops with Alejandro Vainstein, Roberto Páez and Luis Felipe Noé and obtained a scholarship from the Fundación Antorchas to study with Guillermo Kuitca.
I dedicate myself to painting since 1978 and do exhibitions since 1982.
I have taken part in art biennials, as well as national and international events: IV Habana Art Biennial, Cuba (1991); Festival des Allumées, Nantes, France (1992); 70/80/90, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina (1995); I Mercosur Art Biennial (1997); L' Abstraction et ses territoires, Le 19, Centre Regional d'Art Contemporain, Montbélliard, France (1998), etc.
My most important recent exhibitions have been: Antología Reciente (1997-2008), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano (MACLA), La Plata, Argentina (2008); Sístole y Diástole (2006) and Nada Ocurre Dos Veces (2003), Rubbers Art Gallery, Buenos Aires; Pintura Existencial, Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, Miami—Buenos Aires (2001); Antología Inestable, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina — Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bahía Blanca (MACBA), Bahía Blanca, Argentina (1995), Adiós Pampa Mía, Sara García Uriburu Art Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (1990).
Since 1996 I have participated, together with Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts Gallery, in the following art fairs: Art Chicago; Arco (Madrid), Art Bassel, FIAC (Paris), Miami, Expo Guadalajara, FIA (Caracas), Mirarte (Bogota), Art Cologne, among others. Since 2003 I also participate in ArteBA (Buenos Aires), where I am represented by Rubbers Art Gallery.
Between 2000 and 2005 I have taken part in the TRAMA (Programme for the cooperation and confrontation between artists) projects (http://www.proyectotrama.org).
Between 2005 and 2005 I have been a member of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA) Board of Directors.
Between January and April, 2000, I have undergone a work residency at ARTELEKU, San Sebastián, Spain.
In March, 2008, I was involved and took part in the RIAA (Argentina International Artist Residency), done at the Old Ostende Hotel.
I teach Art since 1994.
I currently live and work in Buenos Aires.
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.
I should point out that I don’t believe to be painting always the same way. The differences might be rather imperceptibles, between moments and moments, but I always have in mind that working with different materials (on paper or on canvas, for instance), causes on me a series of actions that differ all the time. I tend to adecquate my procedures to the given moment and to each painting itself; and I come and go from what I think are my ways of understanding and ignoring what I do, with an old confidence in what such acts may acquire within the course of that link between the author —which is me— and the work —which is what is always left behind as a lived experience and as a built object, both out of express will and a need towards creation.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I have always liked that my works could be seen next to other paintings of mine, so that they can create a certain climate, a small atmosphere of correlations which is always helpful to better perceive (understand?) what are they about.
One thing is certain, and it is that I have never liked to see them reproduced by any means. Paintings in general, I think, and specially mine, need to be contemplated in their natural emergency.
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?
I have a huge interest in all the history of art, and all the territories I might call adjacents to it: Archaeological objects, handcrafts, etc.
I enjoy rambling and digressing with my eyes, but those artists I like to frecquent, or that I think have been an influence to me at some point, I don’t know what relation do they have with my paintings: Malevich or Monet, Lucio Fontana or Alfredo Hlito, Fermín Eguía or Philip Guston, Fortunato Lacámera or Guillermo Kuitca, Nicolás de Staël or Morandi. I don’t know that, as I don´t know either how could they have influenced me, and I know they have done so to a great extent, all the artists I have felt as being very close to me: Claudia Fontes, Mauro Machado, Daniel García, Luis Freistav, Irene Banchero.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
I remember exhibitions that are now legendary to me, and I’m talking about a long time ago: Norberto Gómez at Artemúltiple art gallery; Fermín Eguía at Atica, Juan Pablo Renzi or Marcia Schvartz at Ruth Benzacar, Guillermo Kuitca at Julia Lublin. Today, I very much enjoy the retrospectives: Fontana at Fundación Proa, Grippo at MALBA, Distéfano at the MNBA, León Ferrari at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Liliana Maresca at the Museo Castagnino; Kasuya Sakai, Aguirrezabala, Pablo Suárez.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
In a previous answer to this question, I said that the field was more attractive that the singularities. I no longer think that way, but truth is that such a field has expanded so much that it is now difficult for me to make a reliable analysis of the art scene. I tend to believe that day after day I’m able to see but a smaller and smaller fraction of the whole, a whole that we could now consider mythical, being as it is, boundless and overflowed.
So I have learnt to enjoy what I can cover, which is quite enough anyway, taking the load of the encyclopedia and the world map off my mind. (Frederic Jameson has already suggested it, hasn’t he?)
