Francisco Ugarte

Galería de Arte Mexicano presents No era aquí by Francisco Ugarte.

He is a magician. He is an impostor. He is an artist.

a) None of the above

b) All are valid

c) The second statement is the true one

Sleight of hand exists. Magic does not. Yet the art of Francisco Ugarte is an act of magic, fulfilled slowly, lingeringly, through the slowest of sleights of hand: that which the artist performs, the one that matters to him.

This exhibition, arranged with painstaking care and almost manic precision, turns out to be an unexpected compendium of Francisco Ugarte’s concerns, restlessness, and glimpses. There are few works. Some appeal immediately to the metaphysics of their destination; others point toward the city, aspiring—with their gentle magic—to mend some ruined corner of our threadbare urban fabric.

Magic does not exist: Francisco Ugarte is a magician. Therefore, it exists only in the memory of those who have seen his work. His aesthetic inquiries have an admirable clarity and coherence; the way this presentation of his work is composed is eloquent. And it is no accident that the word “composition” is used here, referring to the basic fact that Francisco is, first and foremost, an architect who composes his attempts. Attempts that are, at their core, sieges laid on a single purpose: that through his inventions and the cautious wit of a conjurer, arduous and difficult beauty may appear to those who attend to the game he proposes as an artist.

The group of works presented here has a strange unity, despite the apparent disparity of its components. From a yellow line that cuts across the courtyard, magnetizing the entire space, to a golden radiance that arises from light transfigured with utmost simplicity.

Once again, Francisco Ugarte gathers his cards: the same ones, which are different. Then, with a nonchalant gesture, he spreads them out again. And the viewer cannot believe it: all the cards shine with radical novelty, and the magic of great art—that which moves us and is capable of changing life—gleams before their eyes and their heart.

And then everything begins again.

—Juan Palomar