Galería Sin título & Gaston Ugalde.
It’s a pleasure to announce the inaugural opening of
Galería Sin Titulo (Untitled Gallery) which opened its doors last week in
Bogota. The special thing about Galería Sin Titulo is the fact that it is
planned to be an exclusively photography dedicated gallery, the second one in
Bogotá, the other one being Galeria MU. It’s noteworthy to add
that two photography galleries is a very small number for a city that praises
itself as the “latin-american athens” and that was named one of the future capitals of art by the NY times
earlier this year.
The inaugural show featured 2002 Konex award recipient
Bolivian artist Gastón Ugalde. (Also known as “the Andean Warhol.”)
Ugalde’s work can be described as deeply spiritual or ethereal; one can sense a
deep connection rooting the artist to his own geographic and social context
which manifests its self through the abundance of borderline iconic
Latin-American-Andean-and Bolivian symbols and elements. All of this with the
majestuous Uyuni salt desert background. The work is also very pleasing from an
esthetic point of view, maybe even too esthetic, it’s easy to oversee the
subtle cultural and spiritual references due to the beauty of the Bolivian
landscapes intervened with such colorful and lively elements.
But it’s interesting to see contemporary photography
that can easily be hung on the living room wall by its sheer pictorialist-ic
merit.
During the
event i had the chance to speak with the galleries owner Carlos Gardeazabal and
chief curator Tom Quintero, who were happy to tell about galleries intentions
to become an open and much necessary space to showcase the new approaches of
Colombian and Latin American photography. i was also fortunate enough to peep
into the selected artist’s they will be showing and representing in the near
future exhibitions and I’m glad to see they have a defined vision of the
type and quality of the art they will hold.