Galeria de Arte Bahia Utopica
Bahía Utópica was born in 2007, as a producer of cultural events aimed at disseminating and promoting the works of Chilean and foreign plastic artists living in the Valparaíso Region. During these seven years, Bahía Utópica has been making a significant contribution in the art world, as a producer of cultural events specialized in setting up exhibitions and as an art gallery located in the heart of the Cerro Alegre de Valparaíso heritage center.
The founders of BUGA (Bahía Utópica Art Gallery) are the Chilean Nancy Arancibia cultural manager and the French Bertrand Coustou, political scientist, specialists in cultural production and management, who seek to emphasize the development and consolidation of a visual arts circuit in the region.
Valparaíso –a city considered the birthplace of painters, a cultural capital and a port open to the world- has historically been an attractive space for artists. This creativity is stimulated by the unique urban, social and natural characteristics of the city; for its heritage past; and for the bustling university cultural activity and the contributions made by the students of the art careers that are taught at the Schools of Fine Arts of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar and the universities of Valparaíso, Playa Ancha and Católica de Valparaíso.
The contribution of Bahía Utópica consists of highlighting the local artistic offer by multiplying the activities, the assemblies and the exhibitions, in order to appropriately spread the talents resident in the area and give greater visibility to their works.
Bahía Utópica has carried out cycles of exhibitions in Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Santiago, professionalizing the production of the exhibitions in the gallery and in other spaces, as a responsible intermediary between the artists and the places or institutions where the assemblies are made. One of the primary objectives of BUGA has been to search for new artists and to have unpublished spaces for the exhibition of art, always under the perspective of a critical and constructive selection, with a sustained and permanent curatorial work and the realization of ambitious montages, far from a closed academicism and oriented, rather, to surprise the viewer and improve the visibility of the works.