Alvaro Ugarte: The Night Battles: Landscapes That Weren’t There

About

Alvaro Ugarte has been working over the past years on a project based on conversations with Mexican farmers about their dreams.The Night Battles: Landscapes That Weren’t There is an exhibition that contains drawings, videos, installations, sculptures and petroglyphs as a result of long conversations full of dream-stories. Ugarte works with the tales, stories and narratives of the dreamers so as to create a map of sorts that reflects upon the movements and landscapes a group of farmers move in across their unconscious.
Text by Helena Lugo.

Alvaro Ugarte (1984) Guadalajara, Mexico
Lives and Works in Mexico City.

Most of Ugarte´s artistic practice begins as a social experience by staging scenarios or situations to function as devices of engagement between members of a given community. Consequently, the material outcomes, which are often unpredictable due to the nature of the actions and its collective dimensions; may take the form of sculptures, installations, or any other documentary record.
Moreover, his background in Social Science Communication, has undoubtedly shaped his artistic practice by given him the tools in how Ugarte relates to art —from its social implications to the methodologies applied in his researches.
More recently, Ugarte has expanded his field of study on analyzing mental structures and social behaviors. Where, through seemingly absurd procedures such as the act of sleeping, espionage and the use of esoteric query, tries to question how the mind function within specific social contexts.