The representation of the different feelings we humans harbor has always been, in the visual arts, a reflection of the expression that these feelings produce in our bodies and the form we take when communicating them to others or to ourselves. These movements, which express joy (the smile and raised eyebrows) or sorrow (the eyebrows and mouth turned to the floor) are generally accepted conventions, from the masks of Greek theater to Munch's famous "scream," forming throughout history the stereotypical image of the representation of feeling. How can we, at the end of the millennium, approach a feeling like fear through contemporary language?
The previous end of the millennium, as far as we know from history, marked the explosion of all the fears that society harbored in the face of the appearance, prophesied by some visionaries, of total fear, the complete disappearance of the world, death as the final point, the Apocalypse.
At the end of this millennium, trust in science, the growing increase in life expectancy that momentarily dispels the ultimate fear of death, despite plagues and wars, and, save for minor manifestations of delirium, humanity welcomes the turn of the millennium with much less tension than in the previous one. The image of the world as a cemetery, a millennial vision revived by the Spanish Baroque, gives way to hope.
Fear is fertile; fear lies on the border between memory and invention. The representation of fear at the end of this millennium is practically conceivable through installation, due to its social, participatory, and immersive nature. The viewer is not confronted with a canvas as traditionally is, but rather is a principal part and object of the installation. Their performance, in this specific case, includes participating in the installation "The Magic of Fear," by writing their fears on specially designed blackboards. In an act of catharsis, "they expose it publicly, and by sharing it with others, they are liberated." Furthermore, it includes optimistic reflection with the subsequent reading of the text "The Magic of Fear" by the German philosopher Schneiderfranken. Fernando Varela becomes a collector of fears in the same way that Neptune is an insatiable collector of anchors, as he ends up parking them at the bottom. The purpose is to demonstrate that fears exist, they are there, they must be acknowledged, but we must not live at the expense of fear. From Munch's "The Scream" to these installations by Varela, much time has passed, and fear as a philosophical concept has also changed.
Varela expresses it clearly within that heart of thorns, in which, for those who dare to pierce it, there is liberation. It's a perfect metaphor for the mental effort to overcome fear. Varela is a positivist, and he makes us share in it.
The Magic of Fear is an installation that uses contemporary language to analyze fear as a social, religious, psychological, anthropological, and aesthetic phenomenon.
Fernando Varela shares mystical and visual concerns with those of Joseph Beuys, one of the artists who has most influenced contemporary art worldwide in the second half of the 20th century. Recognizing this connection with the German artist, in A-dios J. Beuys, Varela creates a series of five boxes that, using different materials, evoke the artist's thoughts. When Beuys, a Stuka pilot, was shot down in the Crimean Steppes, the peasants who rescued him used fat and felt as initial therapeutic substances to cure him. In one of the works, the fat appears accompanied by a flamboyant seed in a poetic image in which the two symbols speak to us of life and rebirth, as does the piece of felt with the transformer, which alludes to Beuys's thought, in which "felt is a reservoir of heat and the felt sculpture a power plant where energy is produced." Optimism! Regeneration, life, as well as the leaves of the trees that appear in another piece of the series and that probably allude to the ecology always present in Beuys, and to his action in "Documenta V" of planting 7,000 oak trees in the city of Kassel.
Beeswax, another of Beuys's frequently used materials, expresses "The absolute willingness to put aside one's own needs and do something for others."
Beuys is present in this exhibition by Fernando Varela, beyond the five tribute boxes. There is a use of language and its transcription into words, very similar to the German master in the Requiem, a set of seven canvases forming a cross and containing the sixth of the seven movements that Fauret created in his Requiem. Music, words, and painting come together in a single work in which the spiritual takes form, function, and space. The word appears in order, patiently stamped with a clean hammer on the canvas. In a complete "horror vacui" that reminds me, I don't know if because of my origins, of the same fear of emptiness that is present in Islamic art.
The letters are part of Fernando Varela's symbolic universe, included in genetic oval forms as in The Birth of the Word, or elliptical forms of an original amoeba in The Formation of Duality, or in square forms that, when wandering along the edge of the canvas, give a sensation of infinite expansion of the word in space, as in Heaven and Earth, compared to the concreteness of the oval or more forceful forms in Genesis I and Genesis II. The letters are presented as a breeding ground for thought, in lagoons of amoebas originating from communication, in infinite particles in the wind as the origin of the sentence.
Duality, boundaries, and limits are present throughout his work. Duality leaves no room for doubt; boundaries define, but limits are the opposite of their meaning, the explosive element, the clear example of duality. The world, the space, is filled with letters, creating a background against which cruciform shapes are cut, opposing colors are imposed, oval shapes are applied, or dual symbols are administered.
Where do all these concepts that Fernando Varela expresses with such overwhelming evidence fit in, so that we "convert" to his art? Either in religion, and we would return to Beuys and with him, to Saint Ignatius, to Miguel de Molinos among the radical Christians, or towards philosophy, to Eugenio Trías and the limit, the frontier, and to his admired and unknown Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken (Bô-Yin-Râ), who, with that name and no time to look at encyclopedias, I don't know whether to believe he existed or to consider him an invention or a heteronominee of Varela himself.
In both the religious and philosophical realms, there is an evident intention to explain the world. Can a work of art explain the world? Varela unites these religious, philosophical, literary, musical, and visual references in his works to evidently explain the world. However, the result is not merely an illustration of his entire cultural baggage; rather, his work is simultaneously method, reflection, prayer, and creative force. In the religious realm, he materializes his feelings without overwhelming the work formally or compositionally. Varela's work engages the viewer. Beyond the merely formal, there is a profound charge of intentions that blend perfectly with the visual arts into a whole. Philosophy, religion, literature, and music are all on the same level as the visual arts, and everything is exquisite and real.
Ricardo Ramón Jarne
Director Cultural Center of Spain
