Private Heavens

Carol Damian

Alfredo Castaņeda invites the viewer to enter into his own private heaven with the creation of a visual system, the vastness of which, like the cosmos, remains unexplored. This system begins with his Spanish/Mexican heritage and his training as an architect, proceeds through the history of art and aesthetics, follows a path of devout spirituality, winds through the language of poetry, and then continues along the path of intellectual and philosophical exploration to find fulfillment in the act of painting. As the spiritual bearer of a new and personal vision of the world, he uses this system to move beyond the philosophical and intellectual to create images that retain their coherency through what may be more clearly identified with metaphysics—of being, of material, and of form. Associating his work with metaphysics implies that the awareness of the world is by no means limited to simple phenomena. At the essence of Castaņeda’s work is the ability to see something and go further than that vision. He can capture in his paintings another realm that lies beyond nature and the recognizable and familiar. It appears almost like a revelation. At times revelation is an awakening of unknown feelings, of sensations of mirth or sadness, of melancholy, irony, hazard and surprise. It comes from our subconscious and from our collective identity. It can be revealed with the utmost clarity, or confused by mysteries both past and present. It is this metaphysical revelation, in all of its complexity, that emerges in the paintings of Alfredo Castaņeda.

Art recreates metaphysics through imagery, and Castaņeda’s system recreates experience through form. Thus, his work tends to re-establish the ephemeral nature of his own subconscious as visual images. In classical metaphysics there is no distinction or separation between concepts of the mind and the materiality of form. Form need not describe reality. At first, Castaņeda’s paintings may be perceived as ultra-real (meta-real) and rational because of his meticulous technical style, but they are impossible visual paradoxes, beyond anything real, and totally irrational.

Castaņeda’s system of visual paradoxes is dominated by the strange personality that has often been identified as both a self-portrait and/or the artist’s alter ego, his intimate and inseparable friend. This bearded man, who does bear an uncanny resemblance to the artist, appears in numerous guises, costumes and disquieting circumstances. Staring intensely from the deep spaces or mysterious environments of the canvas, he may be found floating in silence, as a solitary head or multiple entity, or engaged in absurd activities. He appears in enchanting juxtapositions that reveal not only the uncanny abilities of the artist to invent his surreal realm, but his own role as a shamanistic transformer moving between the worlds of reality and the imagination. He is the Ages of Man. He even reveals a feminine side upon occasion as he continually explores themes of duality, multiplicity and identity on many levels: intellectual, philosophical and aesthetic. The artist is both creator and protagonist, and both are responsible for the strange visual congruencies that haunt each canvas. Who else but a magician or shaman can perform such feats, and why?

In his exploration of the psychological and spiritual aspects of his own, and all humanity’s, existence, Alfredo Castaņeda delves into a very secretive domain. Perhaps a clue to this domain is the presence in so many of his paintings of his now familiar person a lity/ por trait/alter-ego dressed in a type of garment that resembles the dark coarse habit of a Catholic monk. Occasionally he wears the broad-brimmed hat of a pilgrim. Just as this vestment suggests a religious existence for this character, we must realize that Alfredo Castaņeda is also a very contemplative person. A poet, student of many religions, and practicing Catholic, he understands the fleeting nature of life and uses his imagery to illuminate a spiritual model. Mystery, infinity, transience, form this spiritualist equation and are elements present in all of his works. Figures and objects appear and disappear under mysterious circumstances in intangible silence and a limitless void. Often there are no horizons, no boundaries, as heaven and earth dissolve and became the landscape for his private rendezvous in time and space. A melancholy quiet pervades every canvas, despite the often-disturbing images of disintegrating figures staring wistfully into our very souls. How can there be no agony or anxiety compelling these floating, fragmented and deconstructed beings? Their strange and quiet solitude occurs because Castaņeda has imbued them with a spiritual harmony that supercedes any feelings of distress one might expect under such unusual conditions. Undoubtedly, this harmony is achieved technically as well as conceptually.

The images of Alfredo Castaņeda slide from the celestial infinity of his private heaven to the natural world due to the precision of his technique. It should come as no surprise that he admires the Flemish artists of the Early Renaissance in Northern Europe not only for their skillful application of paint and astonishing attention to detail, but for the powerful devotive and symbolic force of their work as well. His mastery of the tranquil beauty of the materials of painting involves the search to obtain a surface and an expressive context for his works that are similar in effectiveness to those of the Flemish masters. How else would he reveal the subconscious yearnings of his inner soul? He is able to imbue his images with a solemn calm, and even verisimilitude dissolves as one feels the source of the meaning is beyond the immediately recognizable—the metaphysical.

This is not to imply that Alfredo Castaņeda’s paintings are so serious, so spiritual, intellectual and philosophical, that they are inaccessible. On the contrary, there is an element of humor in the irony of his presentations. Floating heads, beards that turn to locks of hair, poets that bear the bodies of birds, intangible space, bizarre religious personalities, multiple visions and dissolving realities are only some of the ingenious ploys that may be seen as subversions of the seriousness of content. He can just as easily play games with the addition of trompe l'oeil passages to alter reality as he can wave his magic wand to command its presence.

The paintings of Alfredo Castaņeda are as fascinating as they are incomprehensible. Through a looking glass into his soul, we gaze as privileged outsiders into a realm of mystery, alchemical transformations, metaphysical solutions, and secret gatherings. Here we “will see that there is so much within, always, the truth” in his Private Heaven.

Miami, April 1999