Antonio Ugarte

Resorting to the technique of printing copies on silver metallic paper, he blurs the images and without any technical manipulation, reflects shadows of sculptures which he has seen in different museums and which have made an impression on him. Art critic Bélgica Rodríguez comments on this in the catalogue text as follows: “ The artist confronts space and the real form that occupies it creating new, completely abstract visual forms…in immediate sequences and processes that he transcribes in images of certain degrees of absolute beauty…”

Ugarte is interested in the interplay of light and shadows − which relates him to his painting. Photography reflects the artist’s empathy with certain pieces of fine art sculpture of all times. His eye has disfigured and split them in two at a given moment, and then he has captured them with the camera. Even so, they are easily recognizable. In his paintings there is much more color and fixations with movement. In both disciplines (painting and photography) there is an artist whose indelible trace can be perceived − that of Gerhard Richter. In the case of these photographs the play is monochrome, which renders the proposal more interesting. It brings to mind a phrase by the famous pioneer of photography, Alfred Stieglitz: “Photography being in the main a process in monochrome, it is on subtle gradations of tone and value that its artistic beauty so frequently depends.”