Biography
Born in Buenos Aires, in 1951. In 1980 abandons his studies on Economics and leaves for Boston, USA, where, between 1981 and 1983 studies at the New England School of Photography. Assists several workshops given by Joel Meyerowitz and seminars with John Szarkowsky.
Returns to Buenos Aires. In 1991 presents his first individual exhibition and begins giving his workshops at the Centro Cultural Rojas of the University of Buenos Aires.
In 1995 creates and starts directing the Photo Gallery at the Centro Cultural Rojas.
In 1993 obtains a Grant to Creation from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes
In 2005 curated the exhibition “Vida Real” for MALBA’s Contemporary Cycle.
His work takes part of the photography collections of Buenos Aires Museo de Arte Moderno, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Rosario’s Museo Castgagnino, MALBA, as well as private collections both of Argentina and abroad.
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 am going to choose the Boulevard photograph from the Mar del Plata series (red flowerbed on the sea). An image in which I completely gave into the scene’s seductiveness and the romantic timelessness of the place. I remember that at that time I used to walk in ecstasy, thinking about my childhood and recalling Walker Evans’ work. I saw that postcard, went beyond my prejudices and took the photograph. It was a simple act of pleasure.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I have no suggestions to make as regards the reading of my work. On the contrary: I work with silence. My own, in cancelling all intentional discourse, and I also appeal to the spectator’s internal silence. In any case, if I had to suggest something I would only ask for them to give in to looking at a photograph and not to expect much more.
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 only perceive one tradition: that of art. I recognise that on an analytical level one can speak of different traditions and also of shifts, but I cannot take the place of a historian or critic who classifies, reorders and differentiates one practice from the other. I leave that task and its use to them, I already have enough to continue: there is no reason to know more.
As for my contemporary referents, I must say I have a great appetite for everything that takes place within national and international art but I could not speak of referents in that sense. In any case I would mention my fellow artists, with whom I talk and discuss.
I really like Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nan Goldin and Hiroshi Sugimoto. From the former generations I love the work of Atget, Lartigue, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
a. The Tao of Art (Recoleta Cultural Centre): it outlined the aesthetics for the 1990s based on the curatorship by an artist (Gumier Maier), an extremely significant and novel fact.
b. Constantini’s collection of Latin-American painting, Malba (Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art): both the collection and the museum set the standard at a much higher level than what had been seen in Argentina until that moment.
c. Individual artists’ exhibitions: Pombo’s drawings at the Rojas C.C., and Sebastián Gordín at the Telefónica Foundation.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
With all due prudence, given that a vision of this kind is inevitably incomplete and arguable, I could say I see a greater amount of self-reference within the works, sometimes more primitivism in the realisation and less preoccupation for working on a specific subject. On the contrary, the subject would appear to turn ever more into a random and changing decision, and in any case there would seem to be a stress on techniques or their combinations: toy cameras or cameras made by the artist, printing on non-conventional paper or other surfaces, digital intervention, etc. Anyway, a more cautious analysis should also include those who work on specific subjects but with an aesthetic approach akin to visual “objectiveness”, like an inventory annotation.
