Federico Ovalles, 2024
Federico Ovalles was born in the city of Caracas in 1972. He studied drawing, painting, and sculpture at the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts and the Armando Reverón Institute of Visual Arts (IUESAPAR). In 1996, Ovalles settled in London for six years. He studied drawing and painting at Westminster College, video art at Camberwell School of Art, Art and computing at Tower Hamlet College, and printmaking at the London College of Printing.
"I am interested in working with divergent ideas between triumphs and failures of Latin American modernity and its consequences, expressed in those areas of the current city that function as "non-city" and in contrast to the architectural majesty of great works that erected the Latin American city at mid-20th century. The main axes of my observation and exploration are architecture, geometry, abstractionism, and historical constructivism, approaching it beyond tradition through immediacy, provisionality, spontaneous order, and precariousness. Construction marks the reality of Latin America in the present. I contrast dissimilar materials to create assembly pieces and installations that reference the architecture in a fragile or provisional way; I also build geometries on fabrics or natural fibers and with materials found in the city. "
