“Ritual enables visions, but what do you do with these visions? You need to keep them sensed.” 

- Fabian Ramírez

Driven by a desire to meld indigenous wisdom and Western thought, Fabian Ramírez’s work records moments of revelation that resist easy categorization. Flourishing abstract brushwork first greets the viewer, but then incongruous elements begin to emerge: an outstretched hand, a hint of a Doric column, a glimpse of a face in the grips of awe. References to Mayan symbology are scattered among invocations of Greek myth, and ancient ritual visions find form in the language of contemporary abstraction. In this uncertain visual field, where the eye cannot easily rest in representation or abstraction, and seemingly contradictory historical canons can coexist, the viewer finds themselves suspended on the threshold of apprehension. 

This is Aristotle’s Poiesis, the moment in which preconception wilts and true recognition blooms. It’s a universal experience of subject-object unity that’s as intrinsic to Heidegger’s concept of Dasein as it is the practices of tribes in the Chiapas jungle. In order to activate modernity’s latent spirituality, Ramírez works with materials that embody duality: scorched organic forms raised from woodgrain converse with sinuous brushstrokes; rich cobalt and magenta pigments are pocked and seared; ceramics are fired to the point of disfiguration, and encaustic—a medium as tied to the indigenous history of Mexico as it is to the history of Western art—bares the markings of a tumultuous birth. The resulting work approaches something more like sculpture, a testament to the growth that can only arise from an unabashed embrace of opposites.

By exploring the duality in his identity as both a Mexican with pre-Hispanic roots and a Western-trained painter, Ramírez extends a hand to those who feel dislocated by the rapid pace of globalization. “The whole process allows me to get in touch with something more universal, a place where people can gather— the same thing as ritual,” Ramírez says. On a personal level, we have all found ourselves compelled to choose between conflicting modes of identity, culture, and language. Ramírez’s practice suggests that by holding space for those differences to exist alongside one another, we can discover a richer sense of self and a way to navigate our connection to the world around us.

Since 2019, Ramírez has been studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Ellen Gallagher. For his work, Ramírez has garnered international recognition, with gallery solo presentations at Plain Gallery, Milan, Italy (2023); COMA, Sydney, Australia (2022); Daniela Elbahara, Mexico City, Mexico (2021); Maximilian Contemporary, San Francisco, USA (2020); and forthcoming at The Cabin, Los Angeles, USA (2023). Ramírez has been the subject of many awards and grants, including being chosen for the Alfredo Zalce Biennial Honorable Mention (2018) and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) National Grant (2017), and with selections in the UNAM Visual Arts Biennial (2016). His work is part of the public collections of the Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhoa, China; Kunsthaus Kollitsch, Klagenfurt, Austria; Underdog Collection, Rome, Italy; and Colección Zarur, Guadalajara, Mexico.

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