Budding from the paths and pathos of data as it transcends to and from nonsense to clarity, Gaete’s drawings map the abstract process of communication. Reminiscent of the night sky, a calculus teacher’s busy chalkboard, cells dividing under a microscope or an accountant’s figurations at tax time, the drawings are detailed surveys of how knowledge is formed and conveyed. Fleeting and emerging lines, letters, patterns and numbers suggest infinite routes traveled, not a static or single isolated moment.
-- Leah Stuhltrager, Curator / Damstuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY


Ivan Gaete explores the intricate shapes he has attributed to ineffable concepts that confront us in our complex universe. In today’s day and age, infinite shapes of kinetic energy that rapidly evolve constantly bombard us without our mere perception. The notion of data has become a vapid term with no visual ramifications; however these coded messages, in their entirety form the structure of our daily surroundings and can be classified into subtle lines and concrete shapes with a myriad of meanings. Such is Gaete’s goal- to delve into the depths of rational and automatic judgment and create a visual language that reflects the puzzling nature of systematic universal code and its place within the natural context of evolution and the organic matter that is the living organism. His drawings exude a pleasing simplicity that precludes instant recognition, instead allowing for a contemplative exploration of the minutia that each piece contains.
-- Julia Fishkin, Curator / MetroColorCollision, Brooklyn, NY


Gaete breaths life into data, skews meanings into glorious arrangements, and transcribes an alphabet whose Rosetta's Stone is one’s own deep meditation. The resulting pieces are multi-dimensional, with complex yet orderly grids measuring nature’s immeasurable chaos.
-- Sophie Landres, Independent Curator


As if exploring the fundamental laws, whether in mathematics or in the larger world around us, in recent years Gaete’s work has used both numerical and alphabetical imagery to convey a cryptic language that at once challenges and pleases the eye. In other works an adherence to the integrity of the line reflects the forms and shapes of bursting stars, cosmic collisions and pre-historic fossils. The simplicity of Gaete’s imagery explores the depths of universal creation and harkens back to the dawn of art history.
-- Nicollette Ramirez, Writer / TheMmag.com - WhiteHotMagazine.com