RODOLFO ABULARACH: A Cosmic Vision: Opening Reception & Book Launch: June 12, 5-7pm

A practitioner of Tantric Buddhism and meditation, Abularach was equally influenced by the Mayan traditions and cosmic vision (2 Círculos - Armonía y Contraste, 1965 and Aparición - Centro No. 1, 1971). His compositions from the 1960s were innovative abstractions informed by Mayan stelae, where the artist used light as a vehicle to create space where forms could float. 

" Estela: I took this title from the vertical stone sculptures that the Mayans made. For them, it was a way of recording the most important events, such as astronomical dates. In my drawing, it is a luminous frontal and vertical composition, like an apparition in a mystical, poetic sense. It is like a light imprisoned. The technique I used allowed for a luminous impression. It is also like a luminous apparition through a doorway-the forms float in space, almost suspended by the light. Above, a circle-almost a frontal eye or a black disk, like an eclipse. "  - Rodolfo Abularach

From these abstracted landscapes, Abularach concentrated on an orb that eventually took the form of a human eye (Ojo Centro Blanco No. 7, 1970). He once described his "eyes" as "a symbol of liberation, ascension, and peace. Forms emerging from darkness into light." The eye served as an icon for a multi-dimensional exploration of inner and outer worlds, which Abularach rendered in his spectacular depictions that varied from realistic to geometric, abstract, uncanny, and mystical.

Abularach made his ink drawings with a tightly woven texture, an exquisite cross-hatching he achieved with a pen, giving the illusion of sfumato. These works convey the artist's meditative state; they were drawn mainly at night and seem to reflect the glittering light of a candle (Circe No. 3, 1969 and Olimpia, 1979).

In various mythologies, eyes are often symbols of celestial or cosmic deities; in religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the third eye represents the ability to perceive beyond the limitations of the physical senses and access higher realms of consciousness. Abularach moved from the terrestrial to the celestial in his Cósmico No. 3 - Aleluya (1977) where the iris of an outsized eye reflects concentric cloud formations that float around a dense black aperture. In this eye of the sun, with the moon as a pupil forming an eclipse, the artist explored the concept of the "eye as a universe" and treated the human eye as a miniature representation of the vast cosmos.

Like the eye, the volcano - another energy portal - came to Abularach from an extraordinarily rich iconographic and literary tradition. It is hard to tell if what we see in his work are the volcanoes of Guatemala or the textures of the artist's imagination (Noche, 1992). Regardless of the time they were made, Abularach's mandalas, eclipses, volcanic eruptions, and eyes were all shaped and intertwined by light, fire and heat.