Barrio Escalante, San José

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Navegantes de La Luna, by Rafael Fernández. A smooth, reverberating golden ground sustains a floating architecture that ascends in defiance of gravity.
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Rafael Fernández

Navegantes de La LunaInquire about availability

Year
2016
Technique
Mixed Media
Dimensions
24 × 18 cm
Status
Inquire about availability
Palette
gold, bubblegum pink, sky blue, ochre yellow, ink black
Brushwork
Precise calligraphic ink and quill combined with flat patches and vibrant impastos on a metallic support.

Curatorial analysis

A smooth, reverberating golden ground sustains a floating architecture that ascends in defiance of gravity. Over this metallic field, a lower strip of pure blue hints at a waterline or an ultramarine horizon from which a vessel of hybrid beings emerges. The visual weight concentrates in the lower third, where two feminine profiles crowned with lavish headdresses of flowers and pigments anchor a serpentine column rising into the heights.

The agile, meticulous black ink line coexists with dense patches of acrylic and gouache in luminous pinks, solar yellows, and vermilions. This alternation between graphic filigree and the impact of pure color creates a continuous tension between drawing and painting. The characters' gazes, distant and serene, contrast with the almost carnivalesque dynamism of their attire: within it nest watchful birds, superimposed faces, and clusters resembling fruits or eyes. Near the upper tip, a stylized figure crowns the structure, holding by a delicate, undulating thread a crescent moon that drifts like a suspended talisman.

At just twenty-four centimeters in height, the intimate scale enhances the quality of a medieval illumination or a fantastical miniature. The surface does not seek traditional atmospheric depth through complex glazes or shadows; rather, the two-dimensionality of the gold thrusts the figures forward, turning the space into a hermetic, courtly stage. Navegantes de La Luna proposes a journey suspended in a clockless time, where navigation unfolds not upon water, but across the sheer fabric of reverie, anchored in a visual lyricism that elevates ornament into a realm of intimate devotion.

Navegantes de La Luna

More works by Rafael Fernández

57 works

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View all 57 works by Rafael Fernández

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