Fernando Falconí: a forest.

The phylogenetic trees of the English Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the German Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and the Americans Robert Whittaker (1920-1980) and Carl Woese (1928-2012), incarnation of Western thought, are the starting point for the series of works that make up this exhibition, where Fernando Falconí suggests a reflection around the forms (and schemes) that scientists have conceived to explain evolution and life.

Entering this exhibition is like entering a forest carefully planted by humans. We find ourselves in front of a myriad of trees arranged on the walls according to visual criteria that, in turn, embody the scrupulous representation and schematization established by European and American scientists to explain the evolution of species and define the form of life.

Remembering collages from a few years ago -like Sosia (2012) or El fantasma (2013) - in quid pro quo (2019) (which can be translated from Latin as “one thing for another”) Falconí intervenes on some pages of the Great Didactic Illustrated Encyclopedia from the Salvat publishing house (1987). He hides in black, on the one hand, the botanical illustration, and on the other, its textual description, and intervenes with the drawing of a phylogenetic tree a page with the “scientific” explanation of how Sexuality works in the kingdom. (2019). This operation makes it possible to stress the idea of ​​the encyclopedia as a place of certainty, where canonically all knowledge is firmly classified according to formal characteristics. This is where Falconí alerts us to the possibility of scientific error.

The works Injerto Haeckel, Woese and Whittaker (Tulipán) (2020), Sarmiento (a) (2020), Esqueje y Rapsodia (W&W) (2020), among others, refer to gardening techniques that modify nature according to selective interests of human beings while Hiedra y árbol (2021), Enredadera y discurso (estudio) (2020) and Esquema y subalterno (2020), speak to us of the multiple relationships between species that can sometimes be symbiotic and sometimes conflictive and harmful.

Falconí also shows us how something good can be born from an accidental encounter, as for example in the work Brote No. 2 (Woese) (2020), where he invites us to think of the water element as a place where life originates, as observed in Integración y desplazamiento (2021), where the schemes of Darwin, Haeckel, Whittaker and Woese (which also recall the shapes of marine corals) are combined with the tree-silhouette of the Estero Salado in Guayaquil. This is -for Falconí- a very dichotomous ecosystem: deeply alive with flora and fauna, but at the same time, highly polluted due to human settlements.

The intervention of man in nature is evident in the work Madreselva (2021), where the iconography of phylogenetic trees intersects with the satellite image of oil prospecting in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a subject already addressed by Falconí in the installation La Zarza Ardiente (2018-2019) presented at DPM gallery in Guayaquil. In these works the idea of ​​alteration and contamination of the landscape, including the bodies of water, is insinuated in the large-format painting, where life, represented by shades of green and blue, faces the death of lilac color.

The work that perhaps attracts the most attention is the one with a black background that we have been facing since entering the exhibition, entitled Discurso y paisaje (2019). The black background of this work, as well as that of another entitled Inflexión y paisaje (2021) refers to Haeckel's illustrations of the flora and fauna of the seas. His graphic strategy makes us think of Japanese illustrations, just like in Paisaje con Sarmiento (2021).

Throughout his artistic career, Fernando Falconí has ​​subtly, ironically and acutely explored scientific accounts of the evolution of species and the development of life. In a particular way he has delved into reproductive dynamics, reformulating questions regarding the contradictory relationship between human beings and nature. All this has been woven into the critical way with which he approaches the discourses (and inconsistencies) about the nation, its culture and education. In this new series of works (2019-2021), the artist proposes a new interpretation challenge, aligned with his previous work, which encourages reflection and a historical questioning regarding how knowledge is organized and transmitted on a social level: in these paintings and collages he combines and alters schemes, or grafts fictional trees to show us their fluid and utopian meaning that refers to the need for control embodied by modern man. Thus, he invites us to look at our surroundings, to turn around —physically and metaphorically— any canonical perspective, and to be predisposed to the perception of new forms that illustrate life.

Giada Lusardi
Italy, July 2021