SOLO EXHIBITION. HOSPITAL ESPAÑOL DE VERACRUZ, VERACRUZ, MEXICO,FROM APRIL TO JULY 2026

Oro negro

(Black oil)

P A I N T I N G S   O F   T H E   P O R T   O F   V E R A C R U Z

OPENING
Friday, April 10, 2026
6:30 p.m.

Hospital Español de Veracruz

Av. 16 de Septiembre 955, Centro, Veracruz, Ver.

Black Gold, Paintings of the Port of Veracruz
A Pictorial Exhibition by Víctor Ortega

Black Gold, Paintings of the Port of Veracruz, is an innovative series created by Víctor Ortega, a visual artist based in Veracruz with a Master's degree in Visual Arts from UNAM and over 40 years of experience in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and sound art. He uses chapopote —crude oil, known as "black gold"— as his primary medium, fusing it with the vibrant marine landscape of the port and its surroundings.

The works evoke seabirds traversing uncertain skies, ships at rest before the horizon, the almost mythical presence of Isla de Sacrificios (Island of Sacrifices), and the silent resistance of the breakwaters against the waves. The thick, mutable chapopote transforms into waves, wind, and depth; it dilutes and reappears to suggest foam, saltpeter, sky, and sand, generating textures that allude to both natural richness and fragility.

Beyond its aesthetic dimension, this exhibition proposes a pause: a space to observe, feel, and recognize the delicate interdependence between nature and human presence. "Black gold" is redefined, becoming a symbol of a duality—wealth and vulnerability—that invites us to inhabit with greater care that which still sustains us.

Veracruz, March 2026

SOLO EXHIBITION. CAFÉTÉ, VERACRUZ, MEXICO, JANUARY 9, 2026

Alquimia negra

(Black alchemy)

Chapopote y pigmentos sobre el mar de Veracruz
(Tar and pigments on the sea of ​​Veracruz)

OPENING
January 9, 2026
8:00 PM

CAFÉTÉ
Cultubar. Smart entertainment

Isabel La Católica 249, Reforma, Veracruz, Ver.

In the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, where tar oozes like black blood from the earth, Victor Ortega practices his alchemy: transforming petroleum sludge into marine gold, an elixir that whispers secrets of eternal waves and wounded shores. A black alchemy, not of lead to gold, but of fossilized oil to revelation.

This exhibition, part of Cafété's third-anniversary celebrations, comprises a series of innovative paintings created by Victor Ortega, a visual artist based in Veracruz with a Master of Fine Arts degree from UNAM and over 40 years of artistic and academic experience. In this collection of paintings, he uses tar —the black, crude oil extracted from the Veracruz coast and already petrified— as his primary medium, transmuting it into a poetic element that engages in dialogue with the immensity of the Gulf of Mexico.

The pieces capture the multifaceted essence of the Veracruz sea: the raging fury of the waves during the northerly winds, with thick tar simulating foamy crests and abyssal whirlpools; the serenity of the beaches at dawn, where the material dissolves into iridescent hues of saltpeter and sand. Applied using mixed media techniques with pigments and acrylics, it generates effects of great plasticity: oily sheens that capture the light like solar waves, cracks and textures that narrate climatic erosion, and the pulses that evoke the port life of Veracruz —ships, beaches, islands, infinite horizons.

Black Alchemy celebrates and showcases the untamed beauty of the Veracruz sea through a magical transmutation of the black elixir that emanates from the depths of the earth.

A. R. Acha

Veracruz, January 2026.

SOLO EXHIBITION. CAFÉTÉ, VERACRUZ, MEXICO, MAY 2025

Geografías del deseo

(Geographies of Desire)

PAINTINGS BY VICTOR ORTEGA

Selection and Curation
Efrén Rubio

OPENING
Thursday, May 15, 2025

Cafété
Isabel La Católica 249, Reforma, Veracruz, Ver. MEXICO

SOLO EXHIBITION. FORO BOCA, VERACRUZ, MEXICO, JULY 2023

IMÁGENES DEL ANTROPOCENO

(IMAGES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE)

FORO BOCA

Boca del Río, Veracruz, Ver, México

Images of the Anthropocene refers to the sixth mass extinction of living beings, which is looming due to human impact on nature. Most of the animals depicted here are threatened with extinction; of one of them, only two specimens remain: the North African white rhinoceros. The technique used to create these works involves drawing with sodium hypochlorite (chlorine) on a dyed surface, which can be black or any other color. The chemical action of this substance bleaches the affected surface, and the image emerges.
“A few years ago,” Victor Ortega explains, “while watching a documentary about the Catalan painter Miquel Barceló, I saw some very interesting monochromatic drawings, which, according to the painter, were made with bleach. With that little bit of information, I started investigating on my own and obtained the results you can see here.”

SOLO EXHIBITION. UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (MUAC)
CDMX, SEPTEMBER 4, 2010

PARTITURA PICTOGRÁFICA

(PICTOGRAPHIC SCORE)

Sound artwork presented in the context of the exhibition Translations and Synesthesias

Victor Ortega's Pictographic Score

Victor Ortega's pictographic score serves as a generative project. This score is composed of 52 graphic signs; musicians Pablo Salas, Salvador Amézquita, and Ernesto Soria will perform it with traditional musical instruments: saxophone, piano, and bass. The interpretation of the sound piece will depend on the hermeneutic processes induced by the visual signs. The word "interpret" here takes on the meaning given to it by Gadamer: "The important thing is that all interpretation does not point toward an objective, but only in a direction, that is, toward an open space that can be filled in diverse ways."*

The aim is to generate a synesthetic process between visual and sonic language. Translating the visual image into sound is a process of synesthetic translation that requires enormous creative flexibility from the performers. They must set aside the coded language they know and master from traditional musical notation and venture into an experience that is both sensory and rational. The piece aims to spark reflection on the processes of signification and meaning-making in the visual and the auditory, and explores the boundaries of the symbolic and iconic nature of the sign.

* Hans-Georg Gadamer, Aesthetics and Hermeneutics, Ed. Tecnos, Spain, 1998, p. 75.

Synesthesia is a sensory phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense produces an automatic response in another. Through this phenomenon, people can hear colors, see sounds, or assign a taste to a particular texture. Kandinsky describes one of his synesthetic experiences after listening to a work by Wagner: “The violins, the double basses, and especially the wind instruments then personified for me all the power of the twilight hours. Mentally, I saw all my colors; I had them before my eyes.”* This project can be interpreted as an exploration of the sonority of the graphic and the plasticity of sound, as well as the tactile translations that can be made of these elements. In this sense, it is a translation, not only in the spatial sense of the term, but also in the psychological and conceptual ones. The title, Translations and Synesthesias, also alludes to two concepts with which both words share a synonymous relationship: translation and metaphor.

This work can also be read as a tribute to Wassily Kandinsky, whose obsession with finding music through painting led him, a hundred years ago, to the invention of what we now call abstract art.

Production Team
Gerardo Marván/ Axel Alviso/ Carlos Viñamata/ Guadalupe Mendoza/ Ricardo Jiménez/ Magdalena Báez/ Mariana Ortega/ Carolina Sánchez/ Arturo Ramírez/ Miguel Ángel Flores/ Stephanie Chiquini/ Sofía Corral/ Donato Domínguez/ Alejandra Collado/ Carmen Llaguno/ Claudia Meléndez/ Carlos Basurto/ Edgar Guzmán/ Christian Arcos.

SOLO EXHIBITION. JUAN RULFO CULTURAL CENTER,MEXICO CITY, FROM OCTOBER 30 TO NOVEMBER 23, 2008

UMBRALES IMAGINARIOS

(IMAGINARY THRESHOLDS)

Sculptural works and projects for walkable monumental sculpture

Nine small and medium-sized sculptures will be presented at the Juan Rulfo Cultural Center. Although the largest measures around 1.60 meters, their creator designed them to be built at least 8 meters tall. These are walkable sculpture projects that—as Victor Ortega explains—"were conceived for placement in public spaces and at a scale that allows people to move through them, both inside and out."

This is not a conventional sculpture exhibition. The pieces are accompanied by photographic montages and etchings showing them installed in various public spaces in Mexico City, simulating the dimensions to which they aspire to be built. The sculptor intends for this to provoke in the viewer "an imaginative exercise that allows them to feel small enough to walk through and penetrate them. Provoking this creative act is the function of the two-dimensional images that, through technological devices, allow some of these works to occupy monumental spaces in diverse urban locations."

For Ortega, public sculpture should be designed to improve the lives of those who will have to live with it for long periods, sometimes spanning a lifetime. Therefore, it should be playfully and joyfully integrated into the space that belongs to everyone and be malleable enough to change with the action of light at different times of day and in different seasons, as well as when viewed from different angles.

Regarding the costs of carrying out one of these projects, the artist (who is also a full-time professor and researcher at UAM-X) told us that it would be relatively inexpensive. If a public (or even private) institution were interested in undertaking it, they would only have to pay the construction costs. He would not charge anything, provided the work was placed in a public space, without any access restrictions, such as a park, plaza, school, or public building.

So, would you be willing to give away your work?

It's not a gift. “I am a professor at a higher education institution, and this work is part of my work as a researcher and educator—at least, that’s how I see it,” he concluded.

The exhibition, curated by Patricia Henríquez, will open on October 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Juan Rulfo Cultural Center, located at Campana 59, Colonia Insurgentes Mixcoac, and will run until November 23. Admission to the opening and the exhibition is free.