Murga and Candombe are very much in my blood. They are the music to my memories of summer Carnivals, light, colors, songs, rhythm, expression, freedom, and dreams. I remember sitting by the pavement with my family, water balloons and confetti in hand, anxiously waiting for the parade to start. The joy and energy are forever etched in my memory.
Music can transport us back in time or take us to a dreamed future. It awakens memories and elevates us to finer thoughts. Music unifies us with nature and the cosmos, with others and with ourselves. Paintings do the same but in a different way. Music is more subtle whereas visual art is more direct.
My work is more than anything an invitation for viewer to enter dreamlike, sometimes surrealistic worlds. I want the viewer to escape for a few seconds from their day-to-day reality without asking questions, only enter and dream, like a type of hallucinogen…
When I was nineteen, I had an experience that could perhaps be described as transcendental. Walking on a country road one day, I saw an abandoned house. I remember walking into it before losing consciousness due to exhaustion from the oppressive heat and humidity of Uruguayan summers
"All works are born from the pulsation of inspiration: all images are born from a point and a line." It's like another layer of human thinking, another territory that will suddenly give me a sense of timelessness.
Art is of utmost importance for the world: it is an instrument and an important form of human dialogue. Art is the cornerstone upon which culture is built, and throughout the history of art we see the most significant manifestations of being. Art has transformed, from political and social critique and voice of advocacy to a more universal, spiritual and cosmic expression.
I vividly remember the moment when an abstract painting by Matta captured my imagination as a seven-year-old. I was flipping through an old textbook, and an image sucked me in like a whirlpool or wormhole of sorts, into the inner world of the artist.
To me, these images are the poetics of light channeled by the artist as a conduit. The light is transmitted from elsewhere—perhaps from an alternate universe
Ancient cultures regarded caves as places where transcendental experiences occurred: they were the first sanctuaries; they were gateways to the underworld, to the interior of the Earth itself. In the beginning there was chaos and wilderness, where the earliest humans took to the caves for survival, regarding them as sacred shelters. The epitome of this cave-shelter symbol is that of the womb of the Mother Earth, a place of solace—a common motif across times and cultures.
When I re-approach my works as a viewer, I imagine the images as framed and displayed in a certain space such as a gallery or a museum, since I don’t know how I feel about a painting until it is hung on the wall. Hence, one of my favorite parts of exhibitions is when people tell me how they feel about and what they see in my works, and then I become a viewer of viewers.