BLACK GALLERY

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

Black Gallery was founded and directed by Mercedes Sader and Patricia Fernández Graña in 2014, in Uruguay. It promotes innovation in curatorial practices through its exhibition program. It maintains the commitment to preserve the legacy of historical figures and encourage the practice of emerging and established artists, fulfilling its mission to participate in the art world in an active and influential way.

www.blackgallery.net

CURATORIAL VISION

Mix Data emerges from a line of research that Pati Fernández Graña began in her previous series, Small Data. Confronted with the overabundance of images that defines contemporary life—thousands of visual impressions every day, of which we retain only a fraction—the artist proposes the opposite operation. If “big data” is an unmanageable mass of information, “small data” consists of the minimal traces that can still be understood and felt. The work responds to excess through economy: line, form, and color reduced to their essence. Mix Data takes up this economy and sets it in motion. Here, the emphasis shifts to recombination: essential elements are mixed, varied, and reorganized into new configurations. Working within the tradition of Planismo and Río de la Plata geometric abstraction, Fernández Graña returns to the form-sign she has developed over the years—a silhouette that has evolved from organic contours toward a more precise geometry—and subjects it to a process of variation. Color is fundamental to her work: she mixes and prepares the pigments herself—blacks, whites, reds—applying them in successive layers until she achieves homogeneous surfaces on which the trace of the brush disappears. Depth is created through accumulation: invisible, yet present. The booth presents this investigation across three dimensions: paintings on canvas; large-scale sculptures that translate the form into three-dimensional space; and wall installations in which fragments disperse and freely recombine.

BIO

Pati Fernández Graña (Uruguay, 1968) is a visual artist. Her work is rooted in the tradition of Río de la Plata geometric abstraction and offers a contemporary rearticulation of Planismo: fields of color without chiaroscuro or volume, in which line, form, and color are inseparable, and figure and ground coexist in constant tension. Over the years, she has developed a distinctive and recognizable visual language: a form-sign that has evolved from organic contours toward an increasingly precise geometry, in which straight lines advance without entirely eliminating the curve that defines it. This form unfolds across series that move from painting to sculpture and installation, accompanying processes of research that are also emotional processes. A recipient of the first Acquisition Prize awarded by the Don Baez Collection, her work is held in the collection of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry (MACA), as well as in private collections in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, France, and the United States. She lives and works in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

ESTE FOCUS

Conversation on the Deck with the artist
Francisca Maya

In Spanish, without translation.
Open to the public.

Date: January 6
Time: 6:50 pm
Venue: Pavilion VIK
Ruta 10, Km 182.5, José Ignacio

CURATORIAL

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.

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.

STATEMENT

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.