Exhibiciones

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 with the architectural majesty of great works that erected the modern Latin American city of the mid-twentieth 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 constructive precariousness that so much marks the reality in the present of Latin America. I counterpose dissimilar materials to create pieces of assemblage and installations that reference the architectural in a fragile or provisional way, I also build geometries on fabrics or natural fibers and with materials found in the city.

Federico Ovalles was born in Caracas in 1972. During the seventies and eighties, the decades of his growth and artistic training, the city simultaneously witnessed the successes and weaknesses of the promises of modernity.

On the one hand, since the 1950s a large group of Venezuelan artists -from Paris- had taken on with vigor, and much added originality, the avant-garde tendencies affiliated with the experimentation of the European metropolis. But also in that period Caracas was already beginning to witness the failure of those dreams that, on the other hand, can be seen as dreams close to those cherished by many Latin American cities, including Medellín.

Also in artistic events —in the popularity of the various forms of abstractionism— a path advanced that took geometric abstraction to the unusual circuit of boom, popularity, officialization to the point of monumentalization... and disenchantment. From there arises the work of Federico Ovalles, in whose context he appears destroyed, developed mostly in Medellín for this exhibition.

Nydia Gutierrez
curator

Exhibiciones

Realidades Oníricas.Abstracción en la vida y obra de Jorge Riveros

UNRAVEL The Power and Politics of Textile Art

The Offering

De Aion a Cronos: la obra de Ernesto Briel

Tierra de nadie

Todo el tiempo que sea necesario

Diseminaciones Entrópicas

Poéticas visuales, arte concreto y minimalismo latinoamericano

Shipibo-Konibo. Retratos de mi sangre

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art

Threads to The South

Essay on Earth (Ensayo sobre la tierra )

HETEROTROPISMOS

Chants from Overseas

Myth Makers

Pioneering Ceramics

tropicalidades

To Weave The Sky

Antes de América: Fuentes originarias en la cultura moderna

Pinta PArC 2023

LABERINTO

Destrudo Substrato Medellin

Chronoplasticity. How to eat a Rolex.

ARTBO 2024

Modernismos: simultáneamente y de manera sistemática

ARCO Lisboa | OPENING SECTION

ARTBO | Fin de Semana 2024

Lo Inmemorial Luis Fernando Zapata

Zonamaco 2024

ARTBO 2023

TODO AQUELLO QUE AMAMOS ESTÁ PERDIDO

ANUDAR Y DESANUDAR

ARTBO FIN DE SEMANA 2023

Je suis veritablement un goutte du soleil sous la terre.

La inquietud del ver

ZONA MACO 2023

ETHOS

GRAMATICAL

DIÁFANA

ZONA MACO 2022. LGM Gallery

UTOPÍAS DE LO INMATERIAL

FORMAS CONSTRUCTIVAS, ORÍGENES Y PROGRESIÓN

ATLAS DE UN CONTINENTE QUE NO EXISTE

GEOMETRÍAS Y ABSTRACCIONES - HOMENAJE A NEGRET