Conóceme

For forty years, I have built a career at the meeting point between two life-long passions: medical science and visual art.

After training as a medical doctor in Latin America's foremost medical school, I went on to specialize in Ophthalmology at the Hebrew University in Israel. Art and photography had been an interest of mine since boyhood. But the striking landscapes of the Levant turned these pastimes into an obsession. It was during this Middle-Eastern adventure that I began to accumulate a massive, ongoing image archive that became the foundation for my art practice.

Once I got to Mexico, I became absorbed in my work as a medical practitioner. I co-founded a state-of-the-art ophthalmology center at my alma mater, as well as serving as lead consultant for neuro-ophthalmological matters across all departments. On top of this, I taught at the medical school and coordinated the undergraduate and residency programs. All this while keeping up a longstanding surgical practice--performing thousands of eye operations.

These were busy years, but I could never abandon visual art. At the medical school, I worked with a team of medical illustrators, with whom I worked to explore the possibilities of digital illustration tools. The year was 1984 and this is how I got introduced to the original 64k Apple Macintosh personal computer and became an early adopter of software such as Photoshop. I joined the ongoing revolution in digital image making and design, which I rightly believed would continue changing the face of art for years to come.

Photography, traditional media, fine art printing--during these years I brought these skills and technology together into a new kind of practice. I experimented with new processes: digital darkroom techniques, museum-quality pigment printing combined with oils, acrylics and metallic paints in monumental sizes, fine art photography and a variety of painting substrates. With each work, I figured out new configurations of traditional and digital techniques.

My natural creative impulses were always tied to continuous experimentation. I spent decades developing these techniques, refusing to become prisoner of a particular style, reputation, or even my own ego. I was driven to become a visual polyglot--to embrace a wide range of visual idioms; interpreting and reinterpreting images and styles burnt into my visual memory. I explored well-trodden paths but was just as willing to go off-trail into the unknown. As any dedicated artist knows, creativity is largely about re-interpretation. But while absolute originality is impossible, the goal must always be to conjure up fresh new experiences and inspirations in the viewer. I believe that the old mantra that artists should develop a unique and recognizable style is nothing more than an oppressive imposition of the art establishment. Authentic artistic activity is much more about exploration than about such forced consistency.

A few years ago I took stock of the large repository of paintings, sketches, analog and digital photography. In a spirit of curiosity, I began to re-organize, reassemble, and rework this material. Curiosity became a calling and then an enterprise. Together with Jeanett Suarez, my life and business partner, a new project began to take shape,  an art gallery to showcase my life's work, not a brick-and-mortar establishment but an online art space, accessible worldwide. Curating and web development took us four years of hard work. All the while, I created hundreds of brand new images, which we have organized into collections with artworks seldom seen by anyone before.

These twenty collections will continue to grow and develop showing new artwork every day. Our curatorial approach is based on the scientific certainty that art can contribute positively to emotional well-being. This project thus brings together my art and my forty years of experience in the fields of clinical ophthalmology, neuro-ophthalmology and visual sciences.

My goal is not merely to express myself, but rather to incorporate art into mood-enhancing living and working spaces to help bring out the best in people.