BLACK GALLERY

Pueblo Garzón | Uruguay
Directors | Mercedes Sader & Patricia Fernández Graña

Mercedes Sader and Patricia Fernández Graña founded and direct Black Gallery in Uruguay in 2014. It promotes innovation in curatorial practices through its exhibition program. It remains committed to preserving the legacy of historical figures and supporting emerging and established artists, fulfilling its mission to participate actively and influentially in the art world.

www.blackgallery.net

CURATORIAL VISION

Mix Data extends Pati Fernández Graña’s ongoing investigation into how visual information can be reduced, recombined, and reorganized. Developed from the earlier series Small Data, the project responds to the saturation of images in contemporary life through an economy of line, form, and color. Drawing on Planismo and Río de la Plata geometric abstraction, Fernández Graña returns to a recurring form-sign that shifts between organic contour and precise geometry. The presentation brings this research into painting, large-scale sculpture, and wall installation. Carefully prepared pigments and layered surfaces eliminate visible brushwork, while repeated forms migrate across dimensions, generating changing relationships between figure, ground, color, and space.

BIO

Pati Fernández Graña (b. 1968, Uruguay) develops a practice rooted in Río de la Plata geometric abstraction and a contemporary reconsideration of Planismo. Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, she constructs compositions in which line, color, figure, and ground remain in continuous tension. A recurring form-sign—moving between curved and increasingly geometric structures—provides a visual thread across her work. Fernández Graña receives the first Acquisition Prize of the Don Baez Collection. Her work is held by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry (MACA) and in private collections in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, France, and the United States. She lives and works in Punta del Este.

ESTE FOCUS

Booth walkthrough with the artist
Francisca Maya

In Spanish, without translation.
Open to the public.

January 6, 2026
6:50 – 7:30 PM
Pavilion VIK

CURATORIAL VISION

For ESTE ARTE 2026, 12th edition, Black Gallery presents Francisca Maya’s project “The Dance of the Circle”, conceived specifically for the public of ESTE ARTE and Uruguay. This installation expands Uruguay’s geometric tradition through contemporary exploration of spatial and sensorial relations. At its core, the circle becomes a choreographic axis, guiding viewers through shifting constellations of form and color. Transparent acrylic sculptures, reflective surfaces, and light boxes destabilize perception, while paintings and reliefs extend geometry into illusionistic and material registers. The installation invites viewers to move and discover new alignments at every step, transforming geometry into a dynamic field of play. By reframing abstraction as lived experience, Maya connects Uruguay’s artistic heritage to a contemporary global dialogue.

BIO

Francisca Maya (Uruguayan, b. 1985) is a Montevideo-born artist with a BA in Industrial Design whose practice extends the legacy of Uruguay’s geometric abstraction into contemporary dialogues of form, space, and perception. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation, creating environments where color and geometry generate dynamic interactions with the viewer. In 2021 she presented her first solo exhibition at Centro de Exposiciones Subte, curated by Raúl “Rulfo” Álvarez, which linked avant-garde abstraction with industrial design. In 2024 she was selected for the 61st Premio Nacional de Artes Visuales Clever Lara, consolidating her role within Uruguay’s current artistic landscape. She has also participated in exhibitions such as Abstracción en movimiento (MACA, 2023, curated by Martín Craciun) and Estéticas Urbanas (Galería CAF, 2019). Her works are held in private collections across Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.

ESTE FOCUS

Francisca Maya, Artist
Meram Saá, Artist
María Maggiori, Artist
In conversation with Mercedes Sader and Patricia Fernández Graña, co-directors of Black Gallery.

In Spanish, without translation.
Open to the public.

Sunday, January 5, 2025
8:50 – 9:30 PM
Pavilion VIK

CURATORIAL VISION

For me, drawing is thought in movement. It is my form of knowledge, which moves from one surface to the other. They are all forms of the same adventure where sometimes one stops one’s gaze on a nearby shore, and one listens to the distant vibration of memory, or one finds deep words of those that leave a mark and at the precise moment when one believes one has reached some point. Place, everything changes again and is transformed. The drawing comes from the most urgent need to transit and inhabit space and time, enveloping us in an infinite labyrinth that loses all types of certainties at every step and plunges us into the mysterious forms that border between reality and fiction.

BIO

María Maggiori (Buenos Aires, 1975) studied art in Paris, France, at the University of La Sorbonne, Paris VIII, and at the École de Sévrès. She then continued her studies at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School. She attended workshops and seminars by various artists and the drawing practices of Eduardo Stupía at the Torcuato Di Tella University, she was part of the PAC and Yungas contemporary art programs coordinated by Raúl Flores. She participated in National and International Drawing Salons, won a scholarship from the National Fund for the Arts, and his work has been exhibited at the Cultural Center of Spain in Montevideo, at Bienalsur, and the Engraving Biennial in Osaka, Japan, among others. She currently lives and works in Uruguay.

José Pedro Costigliolo (1902-1985, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)
María Maggiori (1975, Argentina)
Meram Sáa (1963, Argentina)
Pati Fernández Graña (1968, Uruguay)

Bandi Binder (1917-2006, Hungary)
Ciro Jaumandreu (1977, Uruguay)
Francisca Maya (1980, Uruguay)
Heidi Lender (1966, USA)
Hugo Longa (1934-1990, Uruguay)
José Risso (1970, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)
María Maggiori (1975, Argentina)
Pati Fernández Graña (1968, Uruguay)
Rómulo Macció (1931-2016, Argentina)
Susette Kok (1967, Holland)

Federico Ruiz Santesteban (1980, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)
Meram Sáa (1963, Argentina)
Pati Fernández Graña (1968, Uruguay)

Antonio Berni (1905-1981, Argentina)
Bandi Binder (1917-2006, Hungary)
Cathy Burghi (1980, Uruguay)
Julia Castagno (1977, Uruguay)
Pati Fernández Graña (1968, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)
Heidi Lender (1966, USA)
Hugo Longa (1934-1990, Uruguay)
José Risso (1970, Uruguay)

Bandi Binder (1917-2006, Hungary)
Julia Castagno (1977, Uruguay)
José Pedro Costigliolo (1902-1985, Uruguay)
Pati Fernández (1968, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)
Pablo Uribe (1962, Uruguay)
Heidi Lender (1966, USA)

Bandi Binder (1917-2006, Hungary)
Julia Castagno (1977, Uruguay)
Pati Fernández (1968, Uruguay)
María Freire (1917-2015, Uruguay)