Gaston Ugalde - INFO

The Salt Desert and Gastón: A Song of Redemption
By Pablo Cingolani
Writer
“Gaston Ugalde dreamt he was a stone
and when he woke up, did not know if
he was a man who had dreamed of being
a stone or a stone that now dreamt of
being a man.”
If there are two realities that resemble and
reflect each other, which complement
each other and which are conjugated; If
there are two dreams that amalgamate,
melt, and become a single one: that is the
Salar of Uyuni and Gastón Ugalde. The
Salar and Gaston are almost the same
thing.
Gaston fell in love with the Salar at first
sight. He converted his unfillable space,
his own artistic workshop, his own
existential home, his cosmic protection.
For several decades, wrapped only by
the salt and wind that falls from the hills,
he experimented and did everything:
installations, performances, paintings,
salt sculptures, video-art, land art, body
art, photography. Everything.
His devotion to the Salar flourished in
a creative pact. Mama Tunupa — The
Guardian goddess of the white infinity
— made it her son who comes and goes
through the sea of salt, and coming and
going though those immense albas that
may not have anything comparable in
the orb we know, found his footprint and
place in the world. She bequeathed to us
a treasure that, to find or to dream it is the
same, because it is made of the tremendous
sensation of beauty and well-being that
radiates the Salar – and that Gaston knew
how to capture like no other.
If there is anything to thank art for, it is its
compelling ability to evoke everything.
If there is anything to thank the real
artists for, is to become the means for
that to happen. If there is anything to
thank an artist like Gastón Ugalde for,
is that which connects you, that happens
inside of you and that evokes everything,
shakes everything, inspires everything.
He has managed to live and transmit
from the Pakarina, the center of origin,
the mother of all the salt of the earth
and therefore the mother of all beauty:
the unparalleled and unforgettable
sacred space that we know as the Salar
de Uyuni.
Gaston is his Shaman. Gaston is his
guardian, his most intimate mirror, his
mirror of life and work, a mirror where
— if we dare to — we can also look at
ourselves.
It is the most beautiful and serene
mirror that Mother Nature has given
to humanity to feel that we can always
redeem ourselves. That: A Song of
Redemption. That’s the Salar. and
Gastón Ugalde knows better than
anyone. That’s why he shares it here
with all of us. To celebrate the find.
Gastón Ugalde is an artist in the purest
meaning of the word. He has a symbiotic
connection with the Salar, and every
particle that makes it, and the stones
and volcanoes that surround it, and the
sky that mirrors it, and the cosmos that
embraces it and grants it its unsurpassed
grandeur.
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