Res

He was born in 1957 in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. He attended primary and secondary school in public schools. At the age of sixteen, he enrolled at the Lino E. Spilimbergo Institute of Arts, where he attended for two years. In 1975, he set up a photographic studio in the center of his hometown and, a year later, enrolled at the National University of Córdoba, simultaneously pursuing degrees in Law and Economics. With the military dictatorship in power, he left for Mexico. At the age of twenty, his only trade was photography. He successively worked in advertising photography studios, in audiovisual production companies, and in one of the best and most complete photographic laboratories in the Federal District. While studying Economics (a program that emerged from the '68 movement with an emphasis on Marxist political economy) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), he attended photography workshops at the Casa del Lago, coordinated by Lázaro Blanco. In 1985, once democracy was restored in Argentina, he settled in Buenos Aires, where he has lived and worked since. Since then, he has developed a photographic body of work with a strong conceptual emphasis that explores the relationship between time, history, and representation. The titles of his most widely disseminated essays include "Where Are They?", "By Jove", "The Madness of Pascal's Sphere or about J.L.B.", "I Cactus", "The Little Plastic Thing", "NECAH 1879", "Intermittent Intervals", "Conatus", and "The Trial, the Abject, and the Peg Leg." In the last decade, following his studies at the European Graduate School in Switzerland—where he completed a Master of Arts in Communication—his focus has also turned towards theoretical reflection and action. In recent years, this trend has intensified, as seen in "Rosarino Actions" and "Dunamis." Photography has ceased to be the exclusive medium of his work, making room for installation and video as records of actions conceived by him and carried out by groups of people convened for this purpose. Since 1989, when his works were included in the Argentine submission to the U-ABC exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, his work has been exhibited continuously both individually and collectively in many countries. Res has circulated his exhibitions in an unusual manner. His choice has been to combine widely legitimized venues among the specialized public of major cities with exhibition spaces completely unrelated to that circuit. "Conatus," for example, was simultaneously inaugurated at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York (one of the most prominent galleries dedicated to photography in the northern hemisphere) and at the Trapalanda Cultural Center in Río Cuarto, Córdoba, before being exhibited almost simultaneously at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery in Buenos Aires and at the Santa Cruz Cultural Complex in Río Gallegos. A similar criterion has been implemented by Res in incorporating his works into collections. In August 2011, for example, "NECAH 1879" was acquired by the Rabobank collection, belonging to the Dutch financial institution of the same name, and in the same month, the author donated "Jorge Stolkiner's Shirt" to the Museum in the Hills of Tilcara, Jujuy. With these guidelines, his work has been integrated into public and private collections in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, the United States, Italy, Spain, and France. He has received numerous awards, scholarships, and distinctions. Notably, the Konex Award for Visual Arts in 2012, the National Photography Prize in 2011, the Exchange Scholarship from the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Conaculta of Mexico in 2010, grants from Antorchas Foundation, the National Fund for the Arts, and the European Graduate School among others. Three books authored by him have been published between 2006 and 2009: "The Trial, the Abject, and the Peg Leg," Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2009; "Intermittent Intervals," Dilan Editors, Buenos Aires, 2008; and "The Useless Truth," Buenos Aires, La Marca Editora, 2006.