For more than three decades, Fernando Varela, a methodical and demanding, conceptual and persistent artist, has established himself as one of the very few talents of his decade committed to contemporary art. Another distinctive feature, which brings him closer to later generations, is that, a versatile creator, he excels in painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving, ceramics, and installation. Overall, his exceptional personality was shaped by the exhibition of palimpsests at the Museum of Modern Art. Relocated ancestral images, which we could describe as primordial, externalized the Judeo-Christian affiliation in a kind of "paleo-Christian" language, a neologism used by Joseph Beuys, the aesthetic paradigm of the Dominican artist. Taken from the Holy Scriptures, pages bearing edifying verses nourished the simultaneously lyrical and refined style of his paintings: we might recall the painter Marc Chagall, who said that the Bible was "the greatest poetic source of all time." We consider that set of works to be indisputably significant, symbolic and premonitory of future production.

Fernando Varela thus created authentic palimpsests, in several semantic senses, perhaps not entirely consciously. If the word most frequently refers to a parchment, erasing an original manuscript only to reuse it and rewrite upon it, this is what happened metaphorically. The artist, without depriving them of their sacred origin, transformed the folios torn from the holy book, which became the aesthetic support of the work. First, while not pursuing a correlation of content or something equivalent to the ancient original texts, at the same time, a symbolic and even literal recovery was encouraged, if we wish. All this within the evocative setting of prehistoric architecture… The exhibition provoked a stir in critical reaction: a new Fernando Varela had just emerged. A combination of conceptualism and depth attested, for most observers, to a "metaphysical" faith and message, never denied since.

We don't believe a single commentary or analysis of Fernando Varela's work exists without a repeated allusion to "spirituality" as an essential element of his artistic work, although the mention often offers no explanation of the concept. However, before we knew the precise sources that give a special meaning to his creation, we perceived a profound religious sentiment, not necessarily identified with a particular dogma. And not infrequently, they have sought, beyond a rough and intuitive reading based on faith, the origin of his convictions, until Fernando Varela himself revealed his studies and meditations.

The Conceptual Support

"Whoever wishes to verify the truth of my words must seek their confirmation in the depths of their being," asserted the man who could be considered Fernando Varela's intellectual mentor, the German artist and writer BoYin Ra, Joseph Antón Schneiderfranken for the civil state, whose thought has had limited dissemination despite its depth and, above all, its tolerance—and perhaps because of it? In fact, his extensive philosophical work deals with the communication of personal experiences, susceptible to being found in any form of religious conviction, as long as supernatural evidence is not denied. The postulate culminates less in a teaching than in an exemplary practice, valid for all domains of life. According to the thinker, there is continuity between the brief existence on earth and the perennial condition of being in eternity, and one must act in accordance with that proposition. For all knowledge or belief is worthless if it does not determine personal conduct that seeks spiritual light and adheres to a mysterious external force. In art, all creation of forms in the external world will refer to the structure of the eternal spirit, and this manifestation of divine life, translated into concrete expression, will give the work the true meaning of its values. To place oneself "above everyday life" means to move toward the primordial state of eternity. Now, this doctrine did not dictate renouncing happiness, but rather, on the contrary, that it is a duty to conquer all earthly happiness accessible. Finally, the greatest, if not the only, purpose of Bo Yin Ra's writings was to guide human beings toward maximum self-realization by recognizing the union of the earthly with the imperishable world of the eternal soul. A disciple of this ideological flourishing, Fernando Varela began to establish himself in a prominent position in Dominican art and has continued to the present, as a builder not only of forms, but of signs and symbols, of cosmogonies and universes.

The artist didn't capture this inner world that became a visual world early on, and neither did he evolve in fits and starts, without any connection between series and stages. He never stopped searching until he found the exact point his artistic life demanded at that precise creative moment. Observing his prolific trajectory, we know that two- and three-dimensional works are interconnected, simultaneously varying and repeating their visual formulation. Necessarily involved in the perception of his work—even a simple spectator is involved—we will analyze its components in successive chapters: space, figures, forms, and colors.

Space

In Fernando Varela's space, we appreciate perfect structures, meticulous drawing, and chromatic harmonies. It is a vibrant space, treated as an essential component of the work. These qualities are repeated in the figurative vocabulary as well as in almost minimalist abstractions: in all dimensions and regardless of the medium, the artist always orders the pictorial surface clearly. Paper, canvas, terracotta, or diverse materials, a powerful plasticity orchestrates the concept. His period, marked by the exhibition "Curador Curado" (Curator Cured)—where he also served as curator—then the themes of migrations and the labyrinth, emphasize the geographical-spatial scope as part of his research and spiritual demands.

In Varela, a static construction predominates, where the overall form is as important as the detail of the figures, and the principle of the whole never ceases to prevail, at first glance. Delia Blanco, in “The Basin of Consciousness,” already in 1994, focused precisely on this capture of “a shared space, organized and sectorized with respect for the totality and the whole.” Then, when our gaze delves into the space, the interior elements housed there emerge, multiply, and become more precise: figures, artifacts, signs: these characteristics persist in the evolution of the work. Objects and subjects can regroup on the surface—as in “Laislaaisla”—or activate a flat, albeit disturbed, surface, scattering letters in “The Silent Word”—but the “reader” is free to form meaningful words! Today, reiterated and simplified morphologies shorten distances and communicate another dimension, as if imprisoned by space… Abstractions or "neo-figures," open to interpretation, although the artist maintains the same intellectual rigor and remains on the silent path of introspection.

The Figures

Situated between perfectionist austerity and subtle sensitivity, Fernando Varela's painting gradually loses its hermetic quality the longer one looks at it. The resulting image, following the "inner model"—the ideal paradigm for Octavio Paz—will communicate a strong aesthetic emotion which, barring stubbornly negative attitudes toward this kind of iconography, the viewer cannot resist... Gazing, then, culminates in enjoyment and contemplation, surreptitiously conveyed by formal harmonies and a system of allusions: there is never a representation of observable reality. Description does not dominate, nor does Fernando Varela's position in any school, and above all, he cannot be compartmentalized within the artistic heritage of his brilliant fellow citizen, Joaquín Torres García! He operates in a timeless place, in a timeless time, perhaps in search of infinity... until he concretized his interest in the Caribbean, well into the third millennium, and identified individuals with the islands.

Since they appeared in the 1990s, we have been drawn to his characters and symbolic figures, male and female, endowed with an unknown force. They bore almost no relation to human models, although we resist labeling them humanoid. Nor do we see them as stereotypes, but rather a combined projection of the human condition and the eternal spirit, concretized by Fernando Varela, abolishing the law of gravity. They could be states of consciousness and an approximation to the unknown through a physical form, just as, starting from the intangible and the music of Erik Satie in particular, one develops "a language of form and color," as the artist himself, who is also a music lover, states.

A genesis phenomenon occurs, which we refer to a postulate of Joseph Beuys: "The spirit, the idea, the personal aspect, the soul, the intellect, and thought use corporeality to give themselves expression." Corporeality, redefined by Fernando Varela, is therefore those enigmatic characters that populate his work and practically remain unchanged and unchanged...

At the same time, they are in constant flux, on the edge of years and series/investigations, from those two profiles of giant faces from 1997 to the suggestion of the cramped passengers of a galley, feet to head, and an iconographic reminder of the slave trade, when the Caribbean—and therefore Haiti and Hispaniola—are placed at the center of an identifying commitment. In any case, man and woman, on a plane of absolute equality, share the same existential and spiritual destiny.

We said, as we delved into La Travesía: “For Fernando Varela, these men and women, motionless, alternating, contrasting, communicating without touching, express the duality of body and spirit, the continuous exile of each consciousness, dating back to Adam and Eve, sometimes nameless guests in these paintings.” Our interpretation of an exodus, whether voluntary in search of happiness, or fatal and irremediable in the transfer to slavery, is one of the various decipherments to which the painter’s “opera aperta” lends itself – as Maria Luisa Borras describes it.

Now, Fernando Varela's world doesn't only unfold through these undeniably fascinating creatures. He accompanies (or replaces) them with other symbols—and we momentarily ignore the reference to letters and numbers—such as the chalice, the heart, the hand, the brain, the map, the palm, the scabbard, the boat, the altar, the cross, the arrow… as they emerge haphazardly into our memory, each endowed with a symbolic correlation, if not several, as in the case of the heart.

In this regard, we will return to Fernando Varela's appropriation—in the best sense of dialogue and recreation—of Joseph Beuys. If he appropriates Beuysian signs and approaches, he recreates a work of unmistakable authorship: lines and proportions, organicity and construction, intellectual commitment and metaphors, beauty (versus the ugliness of the German conceptualist). He then demonstrates how very small formats, arranged in a polyptych, acquire a connotation of monumental homage, based on well-chosen elements, which Beuys particularly loved: from nature, rose, thorns, and leaves; from animals, the coyote and the dead hare; from raw materials, allusions to felt and grease. In the same exhibition, there was a very important three-dimensional work, the large ceramic cleft heart, dramatic if not funerary, containing scrolls with a text by Bo Yin Ra, which the audience could take out at their discretion, apart from reading it on the wall. Another homage! It is worth noting that the rose and the thorns… the flower and the nails, already covered the intensely poetic installation that Fernando Varela presented in 1997, in the collective “Inside” in Kassel.

Shapes and Colors

We have analyzed certain symbolic components—a much more complete analysis is needed!—since a perception of Fernando Varela's work based solely on the unquestionable proportion of spaces and the optimal formal balance, the meticulous dosage of tones and the refined textures of the surface, would reduce its expressive dimensions. However, a certain reading could consider that the artist grants forms a relatively autonomous plastic life, not only as lines, contours and areas, but as one or the essential contribution to his commitment throughout his artistic career. Therefore, in this reflection, we will avoid opposing or linking the figurative and abstract aspects, but rather we will recall Fernando Varela's very personal geometry, which began with simple and archaeological morphologies and has been enriched over the years, without losing its "sensitive" quality. Divided surfaces, points, squares, circles (and spheres—in the third dimension), ovals, in short, quadrangular and curvilinear geometric forms, continued to structure the visual medium, but the spiral, the labyrinth, the mosaic, and various graphic forms took on increasing importance. Beyond interior design, of permanent balance—whatever the proportions and (a)symmetry—they contain their own messages of peace, order, and elevation. The evocation of the mandala, a cosmic symbol of supreme harmony, is inescapable.

The letter, the alphabet, and writing have had a permanent relevance in Fernando Varela's work, ever since he glued together pages and fragments of the Holy Book. The printed word, according to Maria Luisa Borras, is "an attempt to communicate a thought, to give plastic form to an idea." The letters—of a similar typography—constructed religious quotations, phrases, and messages, almost reaching the ideogram, until they systematically unleashed themselves, "color field" and swarming signs, in "The Silent Word," his most difficult pictorial series—although the liberating process of lettering had begun long before. We soon gave up ordering them semantically or inventing, rather than deciphering, but reacted, witnesses to the expressive flow, while others will see there an enigma, a link prior to thought and language formulated in the chain of creation, or subsequent... as we understand it now.

Coda

Fernando Varela is definitely one of the leading Dominican artists, and a production matured over three decades places him among the masters, a title that does not particularly please him… Intense emotion, aesthetic pleasure and spiritual interiorization are states of mind to which we are led by the necessarily prolonged contemplation of a singular work, which we would long to see soon, displayed within the framework of a great retrospective.