PIERO ATCHUGARRY GALLERY

Miami | USA
Manantiales | Uruguay
Pueblo Garzón | Uruguay
Director | Piero Atchugarry

Founded in Uruguay in 2014, Piero Atchugarry Gallery brings established Latin American artists into sustained dialogue with practices from Europe, Japan, Africa and the United States. The aim is to facilitate multi-faceted conversations about matter, form and thought, rather than a survey of geographies. The gallery’s artists share a conviction that material is never neutral. Painting becomes a field of inquiry, the object as proposition rather than a conclusion, a physical way of thinking. Piero Atchugarry Gallery houses galleries in Miami, Florida, in the United States, Manantiales, Uruguay, in addition to a seasonal viewing room in Pueblo Garzón, Uruguay. Through exhibitions, residencies, and international fairs, it acts as a site of production as much as of encounter, where works, ideas, and long-term relationships take shape.

www.pieroatchugarry.com

CURATORIAL VISION

Piero Atchugarry Gallery presents Chris Soal’s first solo presentation in Uruguay, bringing together works from his Bottlecaps, Toothpicks, and Sandpaper series. Soal transforms mass-produced and discarded materials through accumulation, repetition, and erosion. Metal bottle caps form undulating reliefs; thousands of wooden toothpicks generate surfaces that shift with the viewer’s movement; and fragments of used sandpaper retain traces of friction, wear, and previous use. These materials acquire biomorphic qualities that evoke skin, coral, and landscape. The presentation examines how perception and value change when familiar objects are removed from their expected functions and reorganized through intensive processes of making.

BIO

Chris Soal (b. 1994, South Africa) is a sculptor whose practice examines materiality, perception, ecology, and place. Raised in Johannesburg and based in Cape Town, he works with everyday and discarded materials including toothpicks, bottle caps, concrete, and sandpaper. Through aggregation, combination, and erosion, Soal transforms these familiar objects into tactile forms that often evoke organic structures and natural phenomena. His work considers the histories and social meanings embedded in materials while positioning the body as an active site of perception. His practice has gained international recognition through exhibitions and institutional presentations, including a solo project at MAXXI in Rome.

CURATORIAL VISION

For ESTE OFFSITE 2027, Piero Atchugarry Gallery presents a sculptural intervention by Guillermo García Cruz, consisting of two monumental works positioned on either side of the fair’s main entrance. Conceived in dialogue with the surrounding architecture and public space, the sculptures explore how contemporary thought is organized, connected, and continuously transformed. Drawing on the legacy of Latin American geometric abstraction, García Cruz constructs modular compositions that challenge the linear structures traditionally associated with knowledge and rational order. Rather than accumulating into a fixed system, geometric elements intersect, shift, and establish changing relationships, evoking networks of ideas in constant formation. Interruptions, deviations, and unexpected connections introduce uncertainty into otherwise precise configurations. Constructed from weathering steel (Corten), the sculptures establish a tension between the material’s physical permanence and the fluid nature of intellectual processes. Their seemingly rational structures reveal an underlying instability, suggesting that meaning is never entirely fixed but continuously reshaped by context and perception. Together, the works transform the fair’s entrance into a space for reflection on the coexistence of structure and uncertainty, material solidity and the evolving nature of ideas.

BIO

Guillermo García Cruz (b. 1988, Montevideo, Uruguay) is a Uruguayan artist whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation. He studied at the Washington Studio School and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C. His work engages with the legacy of Latin American geometric abstraction, exploring contemporary interpretations through formal disruption and spatial experimentation. García Cruz has presented solo exhibitions at the Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo in Montevideo and internationally in Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Miami, Washington, D.C., New York, Madrid, Lisbon, and Tianjin. In 2019, he was recognized by the Ibero-American platform Arte Informado as one of twelve emerging artists to watch. His work is held in public and private collections, including the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); Northwestern University, Chicago; Colección Luis Bassat, Barcelona; Colección Alberto y Ginette Rebaza, Lima; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry (MACA), Uruguay. In 2024, Piero Atchugarry Gallery presented his first solo exhibition in Miami, coinciding with his debut in the Meridians sector of Art Basel Miami Beach. He lives and works between Miami and Montevideo.

ESTE FOCUS

Conversation on the deck with artist Manuel Espinosa

In English, without translation.
Open to the public.

January 5, 2026
8:50 PM
Pavilion VIK,

CULTURAL VISION

For ESTE ARTE 2026, 12th edition, Piero Atchugarry Gallery presents Emil Lukas’ project “Perceptual Fields”, conceived especially for the public of ESTE ARTE and Uruguay. Lukas reimagines abstraction through cumulative, experimental processes that yield perceptual experiences—works that are simultaneously investigations of image-making and metaphors for broader existential questions. Using unconventional materials such as thread, resin, plaster, and insects, Lukas constructs works that oscillate between painting and sculpture, creating vibrant surfaces that shift with light and movement. “Perceptual Fields” proposes an immersive encounter with vision itself, inviting viewers to question how perception structures reality. Tailored to the light and openness of José Ignacio, the project highlights Lukas’ dedication to process, intuition, and optics.

BIO

Emil Lukas (American, b. 1964) lives and works in Stockertown, Pennsylvania. His practice redefines painting both materially and structurally, emphasizing process and the sensory dimensions of perception. Solo museum exhibitions include The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2005), The Weatherspoon Museum (2005), Mattress Factory (2005), Hunterdon Museum (2008), and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2016). He has participated in group shows at institutions such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, MART Rovereto, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Drawing Center (New York), and SCAD Museum of Art. His work is held in important private and public collections, including the Panza Collection, Dakis Joannou Collection, Margulies Collection, SFMOMA, Crystal Bridges, and UBS Collection.

Pablo Atchugarry (1954, Uruguay)
Tulio Pinto (1974, Brazil)
Verónica Vázquez (1970, Uruguay)

Lydia Okumura (1948, Brazil)
Pablo Atchugarry (1954, Uruguay)
Pablo Rasgado (1984, Mexico)
Túlio Pinto (1974, Brazil)

Pablo Atchugarry (1954, Uruguay)
Túlio Pinto (1974, Brazil)
Arcangelo Sassolino (1967, Italy)
Verónica Vázquez (1970, Uruguay)

Pablo Atchugarry (1954, Uruguay)
Riccardo De Marchi (1964, Italy)
Richard Garet (1972, USA)
Artur Lescher (1962, Brazil)
Raffaele Rossi (1956, Italy)
Gabriela Salazar (1981, USA)
Verónica Vázquez (1970, Uruguay)

Pablo Atchugarry (1954, Uruguay)
Riccardo De Marchi (1964, Italy)
Richard Garet (1972, USA)
Artur Lescher (1962, Brazil)
Raffaele Rossi (1956, Italy)
Gabriela Salazar (1981, USA)
Verónica Vázquez (1970, Uruguay)