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.
Interactions is the work that represents me the most, because it is the work that delineates me in an intense and real way. Interactions was born out of an exercise called Recapitulation that comes from the Toltec culture but also touches upon the energetic practices of different cultures of the world. This exercise consists of making a list of all the people with whom I interacted in life, once the list is finished (I have not finished it yet) you start to do a mental recreation of each interaction accompanied by a breath.
What I have added to this exercise has been to write in liquid porcelain the names of each of the persons.
Once I finished the breathings and the recreation of the interactions, I mentally crossed each name out with a porcelain spiral, making an abstraction of the names. I keep piling these abstract names resulting in sheets of interweaved lines, on top of heaps that lay crystallised on a wooden table that represents me as the support of those living experiences that constitute me.
Interactions is an endless piece since contacts with people are a constant; the choice of mud as a medium to recreate the person and the breath that goes with the mental action, abstraction and cooking with fire as the end to the action, is all linked to different myths of creation.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I do not pretend to impose any type of reading, I prefer each spectator to link to the work in the way that the work generates an autonomous a response to my person, I prefer this act to be non-bonding, I prefer it to be a private act unless a dialogue from the spectator arises, like a verbal question. I believe that each piece is loaded with an immense luggage behind it, and I do not think that it is an essential contribution to know everything; I think it would be contaminating and it would close the work down. I prefer instantaneous readings that are generated after sensorial or beauty factors, and them to help the spectator to build what they see and, if they want, to give sense to it; if a deeper view is demanded, a verbal dialogue should be there to expand it.
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 do not want to locate myself exclusively in one tradition, I think I approach several ones and that in their fusion they conform something else, and I prefer not to find a name for this but to do it.
I can be involved with sculpture, with objects, with installations, with curatorial practices, with photography, design, etc. that is why I prefer not to give a unique moniker to my doings. The artists that interest me are so many that the list could be boring and annoying, but they range from Leonardo Da Vinci, Athanasius Kirchner to Marcel Duchamp, Walter Gropius, Kandinsky, Mies Van der Rohe or more contemporary ones such as Félix Gonzáles Torres, Damien Hirst, Cornelia Parker, Francis Alÿs, Jorge Pardo; or even territorially nearer like Lucio Fontana, Berni, Gyula Kosice, Alfredo Hlito, Xul Solar, Alberto Greco, Jorge de la Vega, etc.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
A show that I found strong, solid and super sensitive was the retrospective of Jorge de la Vega at the Malba (Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art), last year. This show presented a body of work from almost all the productive life of the artist, and the mutation that could be visualised in each work marked a sincere agreement with his personal experiences, showing the degree of sensitivity this artist had towards his environment, his life and his way of expressing it. Beautiful experience to look at. I found the last exhibition of Daniel Joglar at the Borges Cultural Centre very beautiful, where he displayed a series of tables illuminated with lamps that were suspended or placed above them, thus integrating the compositions he generated with stationary elements, found wood and small objects. Dani´s tables transport me and recreate weird landscapes of limited surfaces, of a simple game, of letting oneself be taken by everyday objects, in these compositions they leave their first functionality to propel our axes into different views.
Another show I would like to mention, unfortunately I could not see the show, but I did see the work before its display and during its production, is Mists (Brumas) by Román Vitali, exhibited in Ruth Benzacar last year. Very strong and sensitive works, loaded with personal significance for Román, super intimate and very deep work. A work about eyes, called Visual Field (Campo visual), is one of the most impressive, since from a special eye test, Román knitted their surface on a gigantic scale, two eyes displaying the places they can visualise and those they no longer see, a piece that shows his vision problem with such a beautiful resolution, so exquisite, the fallacies that can be seen on them become opaque with the complex weave of relieves and colours.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
I think there are no groupings or firm tendencies, but rather that they keep mutating or some of them gain more presence than others, there have been moments in which there was a great appearance of works linked to installations, or the positioning of photography in many spaces, or the continuous revalidation of painting. I believe that there are no fixed axes for the diverse ways of artistic representation or for their origin, since much of the importance given to this is influenced by the views of the critics, the Media or the curators of the time.
