Biography
I was born in San Juan province (Argentina) in 1963, I moved to Buenos Aires at the age of 7. I studied physics in the Buenos Aires University (UBA) and one given day I stop attending to sit for my exams, (I was only 5 courses away from getting my degree)and so I read an article by Umberto Eco where he said he believed in his own knowledge, and that was why he signed his articles with his name and not with an academy title, and that’s where I thought: sure!!, that’s what is happening to me, I need to create my own knowledge, and that is when I through myself into art. Art and its world has given my so many satisfactions that I can only say that they make me happy.
My first exhibition was in the year 2000 in the Rojas Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Ever since, I’ve shown my art works in Argentina and other countries: France, SB, Portugal, Mexico, United States, Costa Rica, Colombia, Belgium, etc.
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.
A piece of art that represents me in a both literal and metaphorical way is “The artist’s Kitchen”. This is an absent self-portrait. It registries my kitchen, my food left over’s and the mess (the boiling sea) that is find in the artistic creation. This image could be disgusting, but there is something in it, some strangeness in the light and color that turns it to mystery and makes it beautiful. About time and space we know that they are central categories of existence. In the case of a piece of art, these start with its production. They make its future. In this and other works of my production there is a registration of space and time that exceeds the photographic language: there is performance in it. Is light in thought, and time in space. It is no coincidence that light is the metaphor of knowledge, since is that, on which we focus our light (thinking) that we can se clearly. Light in the sea of darkness.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
To answer this, we should think in the context we are dealing with: Photography in general. Photography explodes. It grows in unthinkable dimensions, it invades every field, public and private life. And above everything it formulates a language, a way of seeing and representing the world through conventions, understand as a code we are used to read. Inside this parameters I’m interested in the construction of a poetic trying to avoid the photographic language conventions. This poetic is subversion, a disruption of the code, which shows the world in another way, or that “there is another world and it’s in this one”*. My production can be read as a painting in a photographic support and as an exploration of color or light, but above everything there is a component related to knowledge, a epistemological esthetic trying to ask us about beauty and mystery. * Paul Eluard.
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 don’t recognize myself in any specific tradition, but I do recognize diverse influences. My work has been associated to the baroque period, though I feel attracted to the whole painting field. I’m specially influenced by the way of thinking of artists, philosophers, linguists, critics, science men in general; because they help me understand. There are certain theoretical essays such as Rosalind Krauss’ that have modified my way of seeing and producing. I’m also interested in theater and its way of creating fiction, like a representation of life. Cinema is also a very valuable image source. Some of the former and current artists that I found my self interested in, and that have moved my soul are: Vermeer, Edward Hopper, Pablo Suárez, Marcia Schwartz, Robert Frank, Cindy Sherman, Oscar Bony, Grippo, Carlos Alonso, Rembrandt, Bacon, Liliana Porter, Monet, Esteban Pastorino, Caravaggio, Andy Warhol, Berni, Marcel Duchamp, Lorca di Corcia, Nan Goldin, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, David Lynch, Jeff Wall.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
I tend to think about retrospective exhibitions such as the ones on Oscar Bony, Grippo, Berni, De La Vega and others, because this are the shows that show me the evolution of the greatest artists art. It does evolve, but something remains: their own obsessions. I also really liked the exhibition Body and material (‘Cuerpo y materia’) at OSDE Foundation (Buenos Aires).
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
When it comes to art, or better, the Argentinean art system, I get worried about the strength of certain trends. The statistical definition of fashion is: the most repeated the most ordinary. Therefore, I don’t know if the works of art shown are really worthy, I think those have de visibility benefit for being “fashionable” or for finding their limits inside the trendy esthetics.
