Remedios Varo, from De Homo Rodans - Pterodáctilo, Animal fantástico, Cabeza de Homo Rodans, Homo Rodans, each 1959, ink, gouache, and acrylic on paper, 11 3/8 x 8 3/4 inches. ©2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid. Photo by Scott Saraceno, courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
Gallery Wendi Norris is pleased to present Alchemy of the Soul: María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Remedios Varo at Art Basel Miami Beach from December 6 - 8, 2024.
Alchemy of the Soul features María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Remedios Varo alongside each other for the first time. Campos-Pons, who regards herself as an artistic reincarnation of Varo, shares a deep fascination with the transformative power of science and spirituality, a theme central to the exhibition.
Campos-Pons’ large-scale blown glass sculpture, Alchemy of the Soul, anchors the booth, drawing on forms found in the abandoned sugar mills and rum factories of Campos-Pons’ native Cuba. Originally commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum, this newly-produced variation by the same glass blowers in Northern California, takes inspiration from the scientific vessel depicted in Varo’s iconic masterpiece La creación de las aves (in the collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City). Campos-Pons’ captivating sculpture traces the painful history of the transatlantic slave trade while also offering a space for healing through the regenerative powers of alchemy. Also on view are rare and significant works by Varo, including the four masterful gouaches from her installation piece Homo Rodans (1959), which illuminate the booth with magical and alchemical motifs.
Both deeply spiritual, Campos-Pons and Varo examine the healing potential of transformation within their bodies of work. Botanical motifs feature prominently in their narratives, with Campos-Pons taking from her family lineage of healers and Varo crafting lush, enchanted worlds adopted from her earliest days documenting flora and fauna for scientific publications. The exploration of complex knowledge systems, transcending boundaries between art, science, and the supernatural, establishes these migratory artists as pioneers in their respective times.
Gallery Wendi Norris has represented Campos Pons since 2016, placing her work in over a dozen museum collections and coordinating her first traveling museum survey exhibition, Behold. The gallery has worked with Varo’s art since 2004 and has been the only gallery to present solo exhibitions – Indelible Fables (2012), Remedios Varo: Encuentros (2023), and A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings (2024) – since 1963, the year Varo passed away.
