Alberto Urzaiz

Galería Secreta presents Morfogénesis, a solo exhibition by Alberto Urzaiz.

Alberto Urzaiz presents the process through which forms emerge, organize, and transform in matter, giving rise to structures that arise without a fixed prior design, based on internal dynamics.

Between the morphogenic and the real, Urzaiz, with his work, insists on the distillation of chaos as a necessary process capable of leading us to simplicity. And by understanding what the morphogenetic is, we can affirm that it can exist in a whole and, at the same time, be nothing; after all, we have the privilege —which rarely occurs in life— of being here, standing before a non-representational object.

In the eighteen untitled fields of color hanging here, gathered in the Secret Gallery, it's possible we might be standing before a portal to another dimension; but it's also posible not. It's also possible —and very subtly so—that we are witnessing that moment when the abstract, for lack of words, became painting.

Alberto Urzaiz (Mérida, Yucatán, 1950) is a visual artist trained as an architect at ITESM Monterrey. His painting practice began at a young age and has remained active for over five decades. He was a professor at the UADY School of Architecture (1982–2012), teaching in the areas of Design, Theory, and Art History, and has contributed to publications through drawing and caricature.

His exhibition career began in the 1970s, standing out in competitions such as the Second FIC Vidriera Monterrey Painting Competition (Honorable Mention, 1975) and the Fourth Yucatán Visual Arts Biennial (First Place in Painting, 1991). In 1997, he received the CONACULTA Artistic Merit Medal. In 1999, the MACAY dedicated a retrospective to him, and the Mérida City Council published the book Alberto Urzaiz: Las formas del tiempo.

He has exhibited in Yucatán's main cultural venues, has been featured in various specialized publications, and in 2010 he founded the gallery CINCO + UNO. In 2024, he presented a solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural Olimpo, consolidating a body of work centered on the exploration of pictorial abstraction.

—Alejandra Rodríguez