Opening November 13th, 2025
PROXYCO Gallery, 88 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002
Pablo Gómez Uribe
Doña Montaña: An Unfitted Model
PROXYCO is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Pablo Gómez Uribe, inspired by his recent public commission Doña Montaña (Ms. Mountain), a monumental, habitable sculpture created for the 2025 Antioquia and Medellín Biennial.
What is the purpose of a model?
Is it simply a preparatory stage—a stepping stone toward the final sculpture—or is it something more? Could it be a work that invites the imagination to leap beyond the present, into potential futures not yet built?
Models often live in the shadows of finished works, seen as incomplete, temporary, or expendable. Yet their very impermanence gives them a rare vitality. They capture the pulse of an idea before it solidifies. Built from simple materials—cardboard, clay, color swatches, or even words—they offer a glimpse of possibility rather than permanence. In this space of becoming, the model is free to change, to dream. It invites the viewer, to take part in its completion, to co-author what the concept itself can only begin. In this way, every model is a thinking device. It’s open-ended, porous to interpretation, and shaped by the contexts that surround it. Unlike finished sculptures that declare their form with authority, the model invites us to wonder, to imagine alternatives. Its dimensions are not just physical—they are conceptual. The scale it evokes exists as much in the mind as in space. Think of an architectural study: the note that says, “this wall will be marble,” or “the floor shall be oak.” These phrases are not mere instructions—they are acts of imagination. They bridge the mental to the tangible. As we follow them, we conjure the finished space within our own thoughts. And yet, some models resist completion. They remain elusive. They remind us that art is not always about resolution, but about remaining open to becoming.
When a model claims its own autonomy, it blurs the line between preparation and artwork. It becomes both rehearsal and performance. This exhibition takes us to Medellín, Colombia—a city held in the arms of its mountains—to reflect on how geography, memory, and imagination intertwine. The model for Doña Montaña emerges from that landscape, shaped by local rhythms, materials, and stories. Moving from Medellín to this gallery, it carries traces of its birthplace—the terrain, the climate, the social pulse of its origin—becoming an object that is simultaneously local and global, material and conceptual.
As it travels, the model changes. Context demands adaptation. A shift in environment reshapes scale, meaning, and intention. This “unfitted” quality—the refusal to neatly belong—becomes its essence.
Doña Montaña stands, then, not as a precursor to something else, but as an invitation to think differently about process, place, and possibility. Its power lies in its incompleteness. It resists closure, urges participation, and reminds us that imagination itself is the true sculpture—ever unfolding, ever unfitted.
Pablo Gómez-Uribe (Medellin, Colombia) examines how different expressions of Progress manifest within the urban fabric, employing traditional architectural tools of representation—models, drawings, and diagrams—to question the positivist logic that often underlies urban planning and architectural practice. In Doña Montaña, he extends this inquiry, redefining Progress as an evolving and sometimes paradoxical concept—one that not only shapes cities but also generates culture.
