Manifesto | Artist Statement
ES | Pintar para mi es crear relatos y ficciones. Me interesa dialogar con ciertos temas que se han planteado en el arte a lo largo de la historia como la representación de un paisaje, de una narrativa, la producción de un material conservable y los metarrelatos de la tradición pictórica.
Por ejemplo, Sansón y Dalila está inspirada en la obra de 1851 de José Salomé Pina que muestra un momento álgido en el episodio bíblico. No me impulsaba a hacerla tanto el mito en sí como todas las obras que se hicieron a partir de él, participar de esa tradición. Mientras pintaba esta obra, en Argentina había una manifestación histórica del feminismo y otra rindiendo homenaje al recientemente fallecido Diego Armando Maradona. La obra esta cargada de simbolismos que se nutren de este contexto al mismo tiempo que pone en escena la sexualidad, el patriarcado y el feminismo, y dialogan tradición y presente: un pañuelo verde (prenda del feminismo en Argentina), la mandíbula de un burro, la piel de un león, un cuadro de Maradona y otro que cita una Olympia (después de Manet, 1863) que pinté en el 2017 titulada Pubertad y Adolescencia de Anton Regularis.
Últimamente, este núcleo de obras sobre otras pinturas, orbita alrededor de los mitos locales de Argentina. Por ejemplo, Soldado de Rosa que es sobre una obra decimonónica argentina que retrata a un soldado de Juan Manuel de Rosas; o Corro, el Baquiano, sobre un gaucho. La pintura me permite hablar de todos estos mitos en un mismo espacio y con el mismo orden de importancia, derribando cualquier diferencia entre ellos.
Muchas de mis obras, como Joseph Andreas El Narcisista y Pandemia, toman convenciones de la pintura histórica y otros géneros canónicos. Ésta búsqueda me llevó a interesarme recientemente en el género del paisaje que para mí representa la narración de un horizonte, el medio ambiente y el territorio humano. Me interesa investigar el impacto de la colonización del espacio exterior en el género del paisaje y nuestra relación con el hábitat humano. En el paisaje tradicional el tiempo parece infinito, el hábitat, familiar; en el paisaje satelital el mundo es algo parecido a un objeto, ajeno y todo detalle es superfluo. La imagen satelital podría representar una lejanía instrumental que para mí tiene que ver con la tecnología y el ambientalismo. En este marco se encuentran mis intereses actualmente.
ENG | Painting to me is participating in a construction of meaning. My work is focused on the representation of a narrative, a landscape and I’m constantly researching about the materials involved in the production of a painting and the knowledge to understand how a painting works internally and thus endures time. Painting media is like a fata morgana: a physical and an imaginative phenomena put together in a dialectic relationship.
A big part of my practice is related to nineteenth-century painting and tradition. Paintings I did such as Goodbye Gameboy and Pandemic! (Batman’s a Scientist!) are about traditional genres, reproducing masterworks and inscribing them in a contemporary context. I feel compelled to certain paintings from art history that to me represent a system of beliefs that have shaped human society, an idea of good taste and an idea of what a painting should be. I also feel attracted to powerful narratives, such as William Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode, because I want my paintings to have that dramatic effect and different layers of reading. Goodbye Gameboy is based on that series of works
I dwell a lot in the landscape genre. Patagonia and Peninsula Valdez are part of a body of work I’m working on that is about landscape painting, and very recently derived in satellite images that eliminate the horizon on the landscape and show inconceivable distances. This project is about the way we envision our environment in dialogue with a traditional genre. I believe these images not only erase the symbolic horizon of modern capitalist society, as Hyto Steyrl argues, but also show a deep division between human vision and its territory.
Beyond my paintings I also research a lot about materials and in fact I do most of the materials that I use for making my paintings. As I move onwards I feel attracted to the underlying structure of vision and human behavior throughout history. Painting is a technology that makes images and also influences our concept of vision.
I dwell a lot in the landscape genre because I feel that today the way we represent Nature means a lot to our present environmental issues. Also the materials and our relationship to our means of producing a painting has a lot to do with this relationship. In the sense that we become aware of the materials and processes involved in creating a painting and the way it will endure time as an object, the way it relates to Nature in other words. Patagonia and Peninsula Valdez are part of a body of work I’m working on that is about landscape painting, and very recently derived in satellite images that eliminate the horizon on the landscape and show inconceivable distances. This project is about the way we envision our environment and how can a traditional genre dialogue with that. I believe these images not only erase the symbolic horizon of modern capitalist society, as Hyto Steyrl argues, but also show a deep division between human vision and its territory.
Beyond my paintings I also research a lot about materials and in fact I do most of the materials that I use for making my paintings. I like to choose what materials I use and to know what they are, it’s a way of participating at a deeper level in a painting. I’m currently working on a handbook of techniques and materials for artists. I think it can contribute to artists’ communities, especially those in South America, because most of the books on this field are not translated to Spanish and do not take into account the context of living in Latin America where there is a different material reality.
As I move onwards with my work I feel attracted to the underlying structure of vision and our relationship with Nature and history. Painting is a technology that makes images and also influences our concept of vision. In a way it is a tool -a strictly functional kind of technology by which one can produce new images, new information- but, painting is primarily poetic, an endeavour without a clear objective other than suggest an emotional state of affairs.