STATEMENT

Today, like a time machine, and with a robust and diverse body of work, Ugalde converges this decade of work into a single script, stealthily defending artistic mastery as the root and engine of the contemporary art system, against decades of a scene in which the market has favored concept over beauty, degrading the traditional talent of the artist to lesser ranks.
 
This exhibition combines eras, techniques and concepts in unison, creating a contemporary aesthetic imaginary in times of globalization that accelerates exponentially with technology.
 

...And so, in the same way that García Márquez's magical realism concerns a world of total fiction, an almost truthful regional quality that anyone can relate to, 'Of Love and Other Modern Affairs' Other Modern Affairs) combines this accumulation of pieces that tells us a personal and collective story at the same time; a handful of intimate stories that, with their aesthetic discourse, emphasize the basis of modernist philosophy, the legitimation of what is modern or contemporary today and prepares us for what the modernity of the future brings. Individualism, rationalism, formalism, symbolism, the rejection of religion and an exaltation of science and experimentation, all basic concepts of the modernist era, are wrapped in a package of emotional, human, absurd, and sometimes aesthetic ambivalence. sometimes comical.

In this coming and going from the classic to the modern and vice versa, we find key figures from the social and popular circles of their respective eras, portrayed with the paparazzi that the technology of their era allowed them. On the one hand, photography in modern times was already established as a common practice, both in the work and technical fields, as well as in the artistic field; on the other... in the classical era, the painted portrait. The classical and neoclassical works of Ingres, Moroni, and Jacques Louis-Davide are subjected to algorithms and patterns unimaginable at the time of their conception, sometimes reducing their dimension and enhancing it in others. Furthermore, Ugalde subjects the film divas of Hollywood's golden age to these same interventions, giving them an elevated and expanded character of perfection; guided by classical aesthetic canons, such as symmetry and the study of human ergonomics.

Minimalism, color theory and the game of human perception are added to the compendium, creating a timeless scenario, from a specific era and from all of them at the same time.
And why love? We will ask ourselves. Well, nothing is more current than the love affairs of Hollywood stars, or royalty in the era of Ingres, Moroni and Jacques Louis Davide.

These characters with personal and loving stories become the hidden script behind this exhibition and together with these sketches of geometric abstractionism with roots in the mid-20th century, they open an aesthetic dialogue that is so deep, elegant and at the same time technically diverse.