Gaep presents Ignacio Uriarte: Symbolism (May 9 – June 21, 2025), the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. Before Symbolism (2025), Gaep presented two of his solo exhibitions: Sequential Operations (2022) and Three Ways to Draw and One Way to Call for Attention (2019).
The exhibition event brings together new drawings and sculptural pieces, including a compact group of 9 drawings that mark a new direction in the artist’s practice: a more colorful aesthetic and a more playful approach to the corporate environment, without giving up the tools, gestures, and routines specific to an office job.
Ignacio Uriarte adopts the reductionist strategies of minimalism (less is more), while also committing to everyday materials and a restricted field of action (do more with less). A former employee who quit his corporate job but never left the office, he makes use of unpretentious office materials (pens, ink, markers, rulers, etc.) and repetitive gestures. The two sculptural wall installations in the exhibition, made with standard rulers from the office supply cabinet, honour the intrinsic value of these materials, while the drawings feature various visual effects – of movement, three-dimensionality, distortion, light and shadow – achieved with one single technique: scribbling.
The nine drawings that give the exhibition its title form a group of symbols that delve into the history of graphic design, but can also be associated with quasi-religious signs. They are inspired by logos from the 1950s and 1960s, when a new design language, marked by formal simplification and post-war optimism, emerged. An alternative interpretation, related to spiritual iconography, arises from an illusion of light in the works, as if the forms were radiating. Particularly novel for the artist is the chromatic play he devised for this group – as described by the artist, “it’s a trip through the rainbow” inspired by playing with his oldest daughter.
In the other drawings in the exhibition, Uriarte limits his palette to tones of blue or black and makes use of geometric forms (triangles, squares, circles and semicircles) to play with visual perception or to create structures through repeated motifs. Construction of space is often his focus, as well as the question of dynamic forces that influence the direction or the stability of a system.
Ignacio Uriarte (b. 1972, lives and works in Valencia, Spain) studied art at the Centro de Artes Audiovisuales in Guadalajara, Mexico, after initial studies in Business Administration. His numerous exhibitions include solo shows at The Drawing Center (New York), Berlinische Galerie, Museo ABC (Madrid), Kunstraum Lakeside (Klagenfurt), La Ciudadela (Pamplona), Leopold Hoesch Museum (Düren), as well as in galleries in Madrid, Cologne, Berlin, Milan, Rome, London, Reykjavik, Beijing.
His work is included in collections such as MUSAC Léon, ES Baluard Museu (Palma de Mallorca), Fundación Helga de Alvear (Cáceres), Colección JUMEX (Mexico City), FRAC Lorraine (Metz), S.M.A.K (Gent), Berlinische Galerie (Berlin), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), and The Morgan Library & Museum (New York), among others.
