Artists: Fernando Varela - Carmen Herrera

Upsilon Gallery presents Form and Void: Fernando Varela and Carmen Herrera, exploring the dynamic interplay between presence and absence, color and space, structure and transcendence. This exhibition unites recent evocative works of Uruguayan artist Fernando Varela, complimented by a selection of crisp geometric works by American-Cuban minimalist Carmen Herrera. This is Fernando Varela’s first exhibition with Upsilon Gallery and his inaugural debut in New York.

Fernando Varela (b. 1951) born in Montevideo, Uruguay, has been based in Santo Domingo since 1975, and is renowned for his deeply philosophical and spiritual approach to art. Inspired by the teachings of spiritual master Bô Yin Ra, Varela reflects an ongoing pursuit of the perfect composition, one that exists beyond the constraints of time and place. Drawing from the influences of abstract expressionists such as Rothko, Pollock, and de Kooning, Varela’s creations integrate color, form, and transcendence in a visual language that is both personal and universal.

Carmen Herrera (1915–2022), an artist of Cuban origin, spent her formative years between Havana, Paris, and New York, where she developed her signature geometric abstraction. Herrera’s hard-edged compositions, often defined by the meticulous use of two or three selective colors, reveal a profound understanding of form and space. Despite working alongside the Abstract Expressionist movement, her work remained distinct in its distilled simplicity and meditative precision, gaining widespread recognition only later in life at the age of eighty-nine. “I do it because I have to do it; it’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure,” she told The Times in 2009.

Form and Void juxtaposes Varela’s spiritual, expressive dynamism with Herrera’s measured, minimalist precision. Varela paintings explore circular spaces extracted and replicated from each other, while the striking forms in these selected prints by Herrera delineate contracts of strong angular spaces. Each seems on a relentless quest for a resolution of shapes within space or a conforming of composition both spiritual and physical. The exhibition creates a conversation between two artists whose works, though visually divergent, share a common inquiry into the fundamental nature of form, balance, and the void in between.

Fernando Varela has exhibited in galleries throughout Dominican Republic and throughout the US, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Canada, and Mexico. His paintings are showcased in a number of prestigious institutions like the National Museum of Visual Arts Montevideo, Uruguay; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, and many more.

Carmen Herrera was born in Cuba, studied architecture at Universidad de La Habana, Cuba, and attended the Art Students League in New York. In 2016 a large-scale survey of her works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York, which was also exhibited at the Wexner Center for Arts, Columbus, OH, and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany. Other significant solo exhibitions include the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK, and El Museo del Barrio, New York. Herrera has also exhibited in major group shows at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, City Hall Park in New York, and SITE Santa Fe, NM, among many others.