Matías Sauter Morera
Dividing his time between Berlin and his native Costa Rica, Matías Sauter Morera is constantly moving between physical and social worlds, and uses photography as a means of confronting and creating new realities.
After relocating to Berlin in 2012, Sauter Morera, became acutely aware of how significant tropical nature was to his understanding of Costa Rican identity. His lush, psychologically-charged photographs showing infinite spans of untamed jungle are a return to the landscape of his childhood, and a reexamination of memories formed there. His ongoing series of large-scale landscape photographs offers an alternative perspective on tropical and biodiverse countries like Costa Rica, often associated with paradise, vacation or tranquility—one that acknowledges the darkness, danger, chaos, and mystery that jungles also evoke. Though classically trained in traditional photography, the artist has recently turned to artificial intelligence to delve into the intriguing and clandestine history of “pegamachos”—a term from local legends within the gay community, describing men from rural areas who maintained their conventional masculinity and heterosexuality despite discreet encounters with other men. Inspired by these stories and by his fantasies of the pegamachos, the artist uses AI to generate provocative and homoerotic images, creating a visual narrative around characters and behaviors known only through oral accounts. As the artist crafts stories and explores themes, “Pegamachos” becomes a vehicle for constructing a fictional and fantastical archive, offering an imaginative view of the gay community in Costa Rica during the socially conservative 1970s and 80s. Beyond mere entertainment, the project addresses contemporary issues in the gay community: it raises questions about gendered expectations, freedom of expression, relationships between gay men, and the historical invisibility of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Sauter Morera's photographs have been shown in various galleries and festivals—especially in Latin America, like the Despacio Gallery, the GuatePhoto Festival in Guatemala, and the Veinti4/Siete Gallery in San José—and reside in the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody. Recent features appear in Costa Rica's Orgullo Magazine and the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles. Specializing in art-documentary essays, portraiture, and fashion, he has also been commissioned by renowned brands and published in international magazines like Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Stern.
