The experiences of man, in his passage through the world, define his life. Even more so when art becomes an intimate and revealing reality for those who choose to leave their mark through the act of creation. Rafael Villares does not escape from that truth, a young creator who from very early on matured enough to conquer the attention of galleries, curators and critics with projects of his authorship.
Villares' perfect pretext has been to concentrate his intentions on the relationship between man, art and nature, a purpose that he has channeled into canvases, sculptures, drawings and installations, where the sensorial marks the rhythm of each step. After all, most men are only able to confirm what they see, hear, feel, taste and feel.
During a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Villares had a kind of foreshadowing, so to speak. The site is very close to a river and thanks to this he conceived one of the most original series in his career: Dibujos Hidrónimos, where several geometric delimitations are observed in some of the works.
About the subject he comments in an interview with Maxima: "I was working at dawn and the only thing I could see was that river flowing continuously. I began to question myself how something with such a great freedom in nature, we have been delimiting it and putting barriers".
"I began to make these river paintings," he adds, "which are not paintings, because 70 percent of them are mediated by water. I combined two marbling techniques, where you spread some pigments in a compound that can be water or carrageenan, an algae that is crushed and mixed with water."
"Those pigments float on the surface and then you blow on them and then they submerge. When you lift them up they are impregnated in the cardboard and give a shape that makes fun of the geometric delimitations you were talking about. These delimitations represent how each country has a certain percentage of kilometers in the river. The series also has the original sketches that were produced at the Vermont Studio Center, pastel drawings, until I found a new form," says the artist.
Villares brings to the present one of his favorite anecdotes to illustrate human conflicts: "when you look on google maps and you are in a country that is in dispute with the one next door, depending on where you are, the border runs. The original cultures said that the real borders were the natural spaces".
Some time before his stay at the Vermont Studio Center, his Tree of Light at the XII Havana Biennial was a real success. So it is worth asking, what is so special about this installation, what is its poetics, and no one better than the protagonist to reveal his artistic motives.
"Árbol de Luz has a different characteristic. First we have to talk about the open call: the gesture of people sending lights from various parts of the world, and then shaping it into the aesthetics of a tree. It couldn't be anything else, because of the rhizome and the content of the tree," says the creator.
"Somehow I took the risk of using that visuality, despite the references in the history of art and in Cuban art. People could send a lamp, buy one, send one from their backyard or from a friend. The idea was that this gesture of sending light would reach us, also as a kind of reconciliatory light, in that space that was the Detrás del Muro project.
- Were you satisfied with the result of the Tree of Light?
One is never satisfied, that's the idea, because when it happens, I have to give myself a slap in the face and say, "Hey, what's wrong, aren't you demanding more of yourself?
The idea is always to push yourself a little more, to get out of your comfort zone. I see art as a kind of riddle, where the communion of acceptance, dialogue and that dialogue and conversation generates a kind of empathy. I emphasize the idea of empathy, in a way to get to know the other.
In that sense, I have been very satisfied with the reception of the piece and the various editions we have managed to do. I think that the work, even if we repeat it in other places, will have a different visuality and will be received depending on the public it has and who is under the tree.
- The connection between the human and nature has been a leitmotiv in your career. How sensitive must the artist be to transmit that spirituality of man with his primordial roots?
I am interested in the viewer, in some way, being attracted to the pieces. In nature there are certain codes where you come to see the object as such and you begin to question other things.
Art has to be beautiful in its maximum plenitude, but beauty seen from a broad spectrum, not only the conventional. I try to play with those codes: the work has to attract you first and then, through that hook, you get to the piece and start to question more transcendental questions.
- In Maxima's first exhibition, Luces, we could see paintings of yours on the walls of the exhibition space, which simulated expanding roots. Is that a creative line you work with?
Yes, that work is part of the series "Morphology of the echo", which tries to weave together replicas of how the arteries and veins of our body resemble the branches of trees, roots and rays. All these things give you to understand that there is a greater instance that surrounds us and that unites the components that make up reality.
We saw in that exhibition a kind of map with bathymetrics, which are the depths of the sea expressed in different shades of blue. It was to make a topography where a root became the heart, the heart could flow towards a certain river of the planet, that river became the arteries of the hand and then a ray. We were making a single water course that combined all those spaces, in the gallery space.
See Rafael Villares' interview in youtobe, through the following link:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vsE4i3Ak9Qo