The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Ignacio Gatica

Born in 1988 in Santiago, Chile, Gatica’s work explores the forceful links between the United States and The Americas, driven by the broader agenda of globalization. He analyzes this leveled worldview, which has made urban spaces across the hemisphere more generic, adhering to the mold of financial districts in the United States. This is exemplified by the rebranding of Santiago, Chile, into an upscale financial district dubbed "Sanhattan." His practice is centered on surveying how this US-centric worldview has impacted daily experiences in public spaces throughout the world.

Recently, Gatica has been focused on the collapse of the geographical distance between extraction sites and exchange hubs. He reimagines data streams by incorporating imagery that exemplifies this process of Manhattanization or creating pointillistic LED pixel landscapes where elements like the sun, mountains, and horizon are encoded to represent the flow of capital. He constructs these screens from aluminum and steel, assembling arrays of circuits into forms that riff on the illuminated displays of Times Square and Wall Street. These LED sculptures recontextualize how and where we think about the global economy. For the 2025/2026 Main Street Sculpture, Gatica will explore how different zones of economic interests are psychologically and physically linked. This newly commissioned work will take the form of an illuminated display that complicates the distinctions between city and suburb, entangling sites of commerce with zones of leisure.

Ignacio Gatica is organized by Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator.