Antonio Ugarte
To Live as a Riot
Antonio Ugarte, a Venezuelan artist who has settled in the United States, has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in his native country and abroad. Trained in both photography and painting, Ugarte’s works balance realism and abstraction, veracity and fantasy, and familiarity and strangeness.
The latest of Ugarte’s works are a new thrust towards the social iconographic function of which he is one of the uncommon exponents in Venezuela. His present world is man in critical moments. This has meant years of close following very long events, capturing all phases, distinguishing the individualities and capturing the most decisive moments.
Ugarte takes on the subject on a participation sort, of acknowledgment and of identity, of solidarity and of assertion of self being. As his work develops the artist becomes an actor and expectator, produces an experience and assists so it will continue to form and this is one of the most convincing reasons for analyzing his work, admiring his decision, appreciating his courage for doing that which is happening in our lives and of which we are front row witnesses.
This exercise far from a formal one, is a way without a doubt to create capacities, to evolve within a scheme that is a great door to life.
Iconography has regained strength in the Latin American Art in recent years. That is why the Ugarte's example is a comforting one. It was about time to emerge and being aware of another’s foreign pulse, with the “riot that - (as Shakespeare said) - is to live”.
Roberto Guevara
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Copyright Antonio Ugarte © 2009