Mario Guillén Ordóñez paints on personal terms, and has never been particularly interested in any other kind. Based in Mérida, Yucatán, Guillén Ordóñez draws inspiration not from travel or institutional recognition but from the same streets walked daily, the same city seen with slightly different eyes each morning. The work is rooted in genuine conviction, shaped by friendships, football fields, and a deep resistance to the kind of contemporary art that mistakes exclusivity for meaning. What follows is a conversation about authenticity, the gap between art and its audience, and a practice built around painting only what is worth keeping forever.

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If you could communicate just one core message through your entire body of work, what would it be?

Be true to yourself; I hope it doesn’t feel like a cliché, but always be as true and genuine as you can. Try to recognize which are those things that move you the most and use them as the main motor behind anything you do. I can’t even count how many times i’ve heard that i should do the things that are intended to be done; to write down the kind things that the institution wanna read for the scholarships, or to paint the kind of paintings that are most likely to be bought. I do understand and have some respect for most of the artists that align themselves for a piece of the institutional cake, because trying to make a living out of an artistic career is already something pretty stupidly hard.

In my case, I feel like it is almost impossible to come up with a scenario where I put anything on top of my own convictions, because the sense of accomplishment that comes along with achieving something that was pretty unlikely and by doing it on your own terms, is simply the best feeling that I've ever felt. But I guess you never really know. Maybe if someone someday comes around and offers me 5 million dollars to paint something that I would never even consider  otherwise, then the only right thing to do is to put this “trueness” speech aside and just take the loot. There’s a Mexican saying that goes “con dinero baila el perro” and with lots and lots of money, maybe even the stiffest of dogs can dance.

Describe a piece you’ve created that has held the most emotional weight for you. What makes it significant?

When I was in middle school, every day after school, my friends and I went to the football field across the street to play football as if our lives depended on it. Through the hottest of summers and the hottest of winters, it is always hot and sunny in Yucatán, but we were always there. When I started art school, for some reason there were no such thing as playing football with friends. It was more like going to art shows and smoking, but football with friends never left my heart. So I painted this painting called “getting hit by a football is less harmful than not having friends to play football”. I was supposed to send that painting to a group show, but i got so attached to that painting that I even refused to send it even when everything was already set and I was very much irresponsible. 

A year went by and after a series of fortuitous events, I got a sale offering for that painting. I needed the money so I sold the painting with sadness in my heart. What i didn’t ever imagine is that even after selling it, today that same painting is hanging in the wall of my home, because i ended up marrying the girl that bought it. I think that there’s no possible way to have a most special piece. I still miss playing football with my friends, but after 10+ years, also going to art shows and smoking is such a treasured memory that maybe someday soon will get its own painting.

Do academic institutions still play a vital role in shaping artists today, or has self-taught creativity disrupted this tradition?

I think that the most important aspect about academic institutions is for them to be the common ground to create meaningful relationships with the right people and also as a platform for most of the professional opportunities. I think that regularly (unfortunately) it doesn't even matter if you are the most talented or the harder worker, if you build a strong bond with the right person or institution, more often than not, you are gonna get better opportunities. 

In my personal experience, I think that my path through art school was still a very defining thing on becoming the person I am today. Back in the day I was very fortunate to share the school’s studio with amazing painters that also help me to shape my own identity as a painter.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty sure that there’re always gonna be detrimental aspects in every academic institution; it’s always sad to see how some of the most talented students end up leaving his production and getting regular jobs to survive once the school is over. So it’s always up to oneself to learn the right tools to complement your academic formation and try to fight against the real world who is constantly trying to welcome you to the McDonald's family (which is also respectable, but don’t you rather sell paintings than ice creams from a broke machine, specially if you invested 5 years in art school?).

Is art created for the artist, the audience, or somewhere in between?

I truthly believe the biggest flaw in contemporary art is that it feels like it is made to be consumed exclusively by other contemporary artists, institutions or related agents. I hate when I go to a show and there’s a 50,000 word sheet on the wall “explaining” in fancy words all of the reference material that turns the piece of crap that is showing in the gallery, into something very intellectual, sensitive and exclusive. I think that these practices have only created a huge gap between the interest of a wider public, and the regular art showing in most of the contemporary art spaces. 

Nobody wants to go to an art exhibition just to feel stupid. Neither that art should be something already digested, simple or pleasing, I just think that it should be genuinely interesting and creative.I’m not saying that we should go back to the academic roots of the old masters. I don’t even think that skill in the craft is something 100% necessary; i think that what we need is the skill to turn any of our own ideas into an unconventional “expression” that when anybody sees it, still feels like we are in the same level of communication; then he can decide whether the message means something to him or not. I guess I would never understand the existence of that intent in contemporary art to exclude. The wider the audience the more opportunities to be collected for every single one of us.

If you could live anywhere in the world to further inspire your creativity, where would it be?

I think that it’s curious that most of the successful people that I've met in the artistic environment, are often looking for new experiences whether by traveling, or by applying for art residencies, or by bonding with new people, or by moving and starting fresh in a new place, or everything at once. 

I myself am more of a static person. I’m also aware that this is not the smartest approach, especially if you want for your work to be recognized, but I have to admit that if it were up to me, I'll spend the rest of my life in my studio and never leaving Mérida (which is my hometown). 

I can take the same path and go through the same streets, and pass by the same buildings every single day on my way to my studio. But maybe tomorrow, while doing the exact same thing, something different comes across my mind. It could be a song I've just listened to or a video I've just watched or some new publicity I've just seen, it could be anything, but the thing is that suddenly I have the inspiration to do a new drawing or a new painting. Most of the time that's how my brain works. When I feel stuck or blocked, I firstly take my time and then I try to keep working through it. 

I do actually appreciate the opportunities that i had to know new places and new people, but honestly i don’t think that it has a medullary role in the way i conceive most of the images i produce. Or at least as for now. Still, as a kid that grew up watching reality shows on TLC, I would love to visit some US states, maybe South Carolina or West Virginia.

What are your long-term aspirations as an artist, both personally and professionally?

You see how most of the great surgeons or most of the great engineers usually live some of the most reasonable great lives? Well, that’s exactly what I want. I think that I'm a good painter and I have no doubt that I also could be a great one, and in which scenario I would only want to have enough money, enough time and enough respect, so the day I die there is nothing left to say but a tear of satisfaction in my eye. Just in one eye, not in both jeje. 

I think it is very unlikely that someday you and I met in person, but I just want to thank you for reading this, and thank you Artit for the invitation. It means a lot to me. Hopefully you found something interesting in my words but mainly in my paintings, and if for some reason some day you are in Mérida, Yucatán, just know that here you have your place to crash and we can drink a soda as people say that mexican Coca-cola is the greatest one and a like to think that it is true.

In regards to my process of creating, every time that i start a new painting, i try to paint something that i wouldn’t mind keeping forever in case that it never gets collected. Even though for me it is pretty hard to come by a finished painting that fulfills my own expectations and didn’t mind keeping forever.

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What stays with you after this conversation with Mario Guillén Ordóñez is a kind of warm, unshakeable honesty. The story of the painting that ended up back on the wall after being sold to the woman who became a life partner says something essential about how this practice works: rooted in real experience, resistant to institutional pressure, and occasionally rewarded in ways that no amount of strategic positioning could have predicted. Guillén Ordóñez is not chasing the widest stage or the most prestigious residency. The goal, stated plainly and without irony, is enough money, enough time, and enough respect to keep painting well until the very end. It is, all things considered, a perfectly reasonable ambition.