Marcos Acosta

It´s difficult for me to choose just one representative work, given the fact that my working process is a continuous deepening and a consideration of the changes in my own conceptual and artistic essence. However, I can get closer to one particular work, “Man Landscape”, a 200 x 200 cm. painting in oil and acrylic from 2007 that, acccording to my understanding, gathers different aspects that I was deeling with lately. This is an important work within my production, a kind of synthesis between the subject and the way it was produced and its conceptual aspect. In a way, what me really interests when I´m producing a work is to meditate about the man. This is how both technique and subject converge in this work for achieving an outcome that, I think, resumes this permanent search. The format of this work isn´t aleatory. It belongs to a group of works that I made starting with large canvas and no previous ideas, nor sketches. I began working directly on them and I was thinking about the works as they arose. In general, I am very interested in the idea of monumental work, escaping from the human scale. I certainly expect to orientate my work in that direction, and that work (“Man Landscape”) contains , in my opinion, something of that germ of monumentality that would be developed over time. With regard to the relationship of this work with its time and space, I think that unlike many of my contemporaries who produce work (trying to induce behaviors or make a critic to the means of art) only the work itself matters. And this case is not isolated in my production, I think that my work goes in that direction, namely the work by the work itself and perhaps, to transcend time.

The way I suggest reading my work is, mostly, without the typical question, which is so frequent in our culture: What was meant by the artist with this? Frankly, I´m interested in a work that triggers different ways of thinking in the spectator, and not a conditioning of how to read it.

I think the national and international artistic field has not really any tradition or style at the moment. That´s why it would be impossible to select one single artistic tradition. Anyway, if I should provide any name to my work, it would be something related to a expresionist configuration, sometimes closer to argentinian artists like Antonio Berni or sometimes the New Figuration. There are also other very interesting artists as Carlos Peiteado, Duilio Pierri, Fabián Liguori, Eduardo Stupía and many others. And International artists as Sigmar Polke, Tony Cragg, Lucian Freud o Félix Droese, among others. However, I would say that more than being related with those artists (which actually don´t have a lot in common), I´m deeply interested in their work and I learn a lot of them.

Even if there´s any significant work, 10-15 years is not enough time for arriving to any solid conclusions thereon. History, better than me, will tell of the significance of what has happened. Anyway, and risking an own opinion, one of the most significant works in terms of its originality and development is the one of Fabián Liguori, an artist from Córdoba. I consider him one of the most solid artists that emerged in the last decades, and with a great projection in time. Undoubtedly, his work will last.

You can see an incredibly eclectic range of groups or tendencies in recent years in our country. Almost as diverse as the number of existing artists. There are “correct” artists with a large amount of impersonal work, and there are some artists that, facing that great mass of “artistic” clones, try to make a work that transcends beyond what they´re doing. Something like a stream of works and creators that are functional to the system, often without realizing it, and some that are generally not as successful as the others, but will probably be remembered.