BIO

Mario F. Bocanegra Martinez is a Mexican designer, educator, and artist whose work bridges motion design with experimental image-making. Bocanegra earned his BFA and MFA in Graphic Design from Oklahoma State University and currently works as an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the School of Industrial and Graphic Design at Auburn University.

His contributions to the field have been recognized with national and international awards, including a Gold Award in the 2025 Graphis International Poster Competition, the 2022 UCDA Excellence Award, and a Gold Award for Motion Graphics & Effects at the 2021 Horizon Interactive Awards. In 2025, his Tipográficos series was honored by the Society of Typographic Arts (STA) as one of the 100 best examples of typographic excellence. His typographic explorations have also been featured in the book Mastering Type (2nd Edition) and Slanted Magazine 2022 Experimental Typography issue #40.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Combinados comes together through collecting, cutting, and rearranging—pulling from personal photographs, found ephemera, and textures I generate along the way. The process is intuitive. I move pieces around, layer them, cover parts up, bring others forward, and follow what feels right rather than forcing a plan.

Different paper finishes, colors, typography, and images begin to carry new visual weight depending on where they land and what they sit next to. Some elements hold their presence, others dissolve or only partially show themselves. That push and pull is where the work lives.

What I’m after is a kind of friction—something that feels active, a little unresolved, but still held together. Not perfect, not fixed—just enough to keep you looking.