Luis Felipe Ortega, who will represent the Mexico in the 2015 Venice Biennale, has been a strong voice of contemporary Mexican art since the 1990s when he, among other artists such as Gabriel Orozco and Daniel Guzmán, emerged as one of the original artists represented by Kurimanzutto. Ortega began as an observer and analyst of art, transitioning to produce a vast oeuvre in several media or combinations thereof: videos, photographs, found objects, installations, sculptures and, always, the interaction with literature, philosophy and fellow artists. The present lot, Primer desplazamiento: Tabatinga-Manaus, is representative of one of Ortega’s series of works, which features photographs taken by the artist of landscapes or images of daily life, which he then transforms into evocative, provocative invitations to reconstruct and redefine our vision of common events. By superimposing paint on the surface of the photograph, Ortega subtly alters the iconography and choreography of everyday life as our eyes perceive it. Therefore, we see common images (a shoreline, a life boat, hammocks on a ship) transformed by lines of paint which lead our eye down new paths of imagination. The intervention can be a single line of white paint highlighting something, a bright splash of color or a network of painted lines and volumes which become the work itself as the photograph recedes and becomes the background of the painting. As in every aspect of Ortega's work, these photographs are informed by the artist's encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary literature, as he navigates the various languages of contemporary media to comment on the political, social and cultural landscape as a whole.