Pablo Vargas Lugo was born in Mexico City in 1968. He studied at the National School of Visual Arts in the National University of Mexico from 1988 to 1993. Since 1991 his work has been shown extensively in Mexico, South America, the US, and Europe. Among his most important solo exhibitions are micromegas, at the Museo Amparo, Puebla and the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Intemperie at Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City; Eclipses for Austin at the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Contemporary Projects at LACMA, and Congo Bravo at the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. His work has been shown at the 26th São Paulo Biennial and the 5th Mercosur Bienial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and MALBA in Buenos Aires. He lives and works in Mexico City.

For the fifth edition of Art & Nature, Pablo Vargas Lugo chose to bring the intervention sponsored annually by the museum into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. “The piece acknowledges the origins of Laguna Beach as a haven for plein air painters and its character as a city whose imagination remains firmly set on the seas in spite of the vast urban sprawl of southern California,” the artist remarks. “The ever-changing seascape and a familiar element of urban infrastructure and growth, the streetlight, will come together, pinpointing a small section of the ocean as a seascape under observation and reminding viewers of the shifting conditions under which development and our future are taking form.”
Seascape was designed and engineered by Andrew Bloxom and Mark Peters of Morelli and Melvin Design and Engineering Inc., Newport Beach, and was constructed by Maika Scott.