Galería Sin título & Gaston Ugalde.

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.