Biography
I was born in Mar del Plata on July 7th, 1973. I entered the Martín Malharro School of Visual Arts, where I had a really good time…little art, lots of friends. I graduated as a teacher in 98, as professor in 99 and as senior professor in sculpture in 2002.
My big break was meeting Daniel Besoytaorube, who gave me and Mar del Plata a gateway to reality.
In 1999, I was awarded the grant for work production and analysis by the Fondo Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, seconded by the Antorchas Foundation, conducted by Jorge Macchi and Claudia Fontes. In 2000 I received the Antorchas Foundation grant for studying in the country. I studied with Jorge Macchi. In 2001 I received the same Antorchas grant, also with Jorge as my tutor.
In 2002 I travelled to the Saô Paulo Biennial, also thanks to the support of the Antorchas Foundation. In 2003 I met Marcela Baltar, who has been my sponsor ever since, and I created baltarcontemporáneo, a space which I curate and coordinate up to the present day, inviting artists from the whole country. In 2004 I participated in Perfíl del Artista (Artist’s Profile), a series of meetings organized by CCEBA (Centro Cultural España) in Buenos Aires. In 2005 I participated in sessions with Pablo Siquier, Work Analysis and Criticism, Mar del Plata.
In 2006 I was awarded a scholarship for continuing education in plastic arts from the Fondo Nacional Arte Contemporáneo, studying with Mariano Sardón. And in 2008 I participated in the Sessions for Work Analysis and Criticism – Tandil – organized by Cristian Segura, gathering artists selected from the entire province of 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.
Obviously one will choose the last thing one has been doing and all that…but I believe that right now I would choose Circles from the Series of Drawings in Corn Fields.
This work represents me mainly as a person. An artist is what I am in this life and nothing else. If I had been something else I would have tried to say the same things but with other tools, surely.
Circles…marks a vital impulse in my life, a sincere tribute to the circles that appear in corn fields, these drawings, these works beyond all understanding or reason…realized, judging by their anonimity, by beings of light.
What I do is reduce the graphic, and retain the minimum: simple geometric figures. The material for representing this synthesis is direct sunlight. Those rays that get in through any crack, the ones you see after waking up from a nap. Documenting that moment, the ephemeral yet eternal moment, eternal as the sun itself. A beautiful paradox. I use the photographic camera as a tool and sunlight as an element. The relationship with time is non-time: they have always been there and always will. What I do is reveal a little part, minuscule and yet sufficient, of the universe that passes daily before our eyes. Ending with a photograph the size of the display of a digital camera, this decision was taken out of the same impulse of not deleting it from the tool’s memory. So, why think of a size if the very decision of preserving it had already solved it?
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
My suggestion is to be open, as a spectator. Alone, with oneself, realizing that one came to this planet alone, one lives alone and dies alone, and that what one is witnessing is mere sighs (as I like to call them) from another soul which needs to express itself. I believe that loneliness makes my work more powerful, the noises of words are absent, one is with the work and nothing else, it is the moment of absolute truth. The moment of contemplation. Stop, contemplate, remain silent, allow the possibility of understanding oneself and understanding the other to arise.
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 classify myself among those who live by and for art. I speak through all disciplines: theater, cinema, cooking, etc.
Those who wake up and their first thought is art and nothing else, the rest is a bonus track or things that pass or pass the day.
I rank myself amongst the artists who I call A. V. N. I, (artista volador no identificado, autores de los círculos de los maizales) [unidentified flying artists, authors from the corn field circles]. I ignore their tradition, they must have one, I suppose, though we don’t know what it is.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
Enamorada del muro [In Love with the Wall] by Ailí Chen, (Argentinian by choice) is the work, I find it simply brilliant, simple, full of poetry, of feeling.
One enters the room, uncertain of what’s going on, transparency, water, the sun coming through the planks, something that came out of the window, that merged with the crystals, pure sensations.
Enamorada del muro taught me that there were other people who think like me, and that gave me relief: the path I had taken was valid, what I had been attempting had been pursued by others in some way. Confidence is the word.
5. What tendencies or groupings from common elements do you see in argentine art of the last ten or fifteen years?
I don’t identify any group or tendency in particular that could push the envelope, just more of the same, recycled and modernized.
There are questions that unite us, otherwise we would be dead. There are days when I sit down and force myself to try to understand until I’m satisfied that similarities are mere chance, but in most cases it’s not true. Copying the neighbor is wrong! Period.
I find it very positive when similar works appear in other latitudes, and more so when you do not know it.
To relate, to find any excuse to come together and discuss our work, or the others’, is alright (actions more often undertaken when we artists are feeling empty and needing a trigger, a muse) but caution…it can be a polluting agent for one’s own work. It is imperative to choose well with whom to associate. My choice is to do so mainly with artists who give, without asking for anything in return, who have integrity…those who give first and foremost.
A tendency that emerged in these past few years: vampirism.
