Fernando Prats: Darkness upon Darkness

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Matthew Liu Fine Arts is honored to present the latest solo exhibition "Light in the Light, Darkness Upon Darkness" the latest solo exhibition by Chilean artist Fernando Prats. The exhibition explores the profound relation between language and visual expression, showcasing his achievements in contemporary art through smoke-based cartographies. Prats positions himself where language is exhausted, adding his own vocabulary—not with the avant-garde’s impulse to rupture, but with continuity and transformation.

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When the Richter scale has already recorded the most powerful earthquake, Prats continues to trace tremors beyond its indexes. Where geophysical, economic, military, and transportation maps have coded the world, he introduces fields of force made of smoke and perforated paper. His gestures compel us to name experiences geography cannot capture. Through precise control, he creates visual domains where smoke becomes a sensitive field, registering not only natural phenomena but also personal, symbolic, and historical dimensions. Unlike conventional cartographers, Prats attends to the poetics of space, exploring intuitive maps on soot-veiled surfaces. Smoke engages the world as poetry does—not naming or describing, but observing, revealing, transforming what we thought we knew. Through its dense veil, outlines of Antarctica, Africa, and the Mediterranean emerge—maps, yet suffused with other meanings.

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The exhibition gathers recent smoke works as a meditation on presence and absence. Africa becomes the departure point of flight and exile; the Mediterranean, a palimpsest of migrations and conflict; Gaza, eclipsed not by celestial mechanics but by grief. Antarctica, no longer mere wilderness at the world’s edge, becomes a charged frontier—terminal of industry, reservoir of wildness. Works include the "Eclipse Polar" series, rendering circular eclipse shadows over Antarctica; the "Gaza Maps", where shadows expose political blindness and divided lives; and the "Mute Maps", perforated blocks where silence speaks of repression yet resonates with resistance. One of Prats’ most elemental methods recalls Paleolithic artists: blowing pigment through a tube. For him, as for them, the surface is activated by breath—"pneuma", the vital force. Organic materials such as feathers, twigs, and above all his own body, intervene not decoratively but as formative elements shaping the smoke.

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The exhibition can also be read through a vocabulary of ascension. If the Richter scale ends at 9.5, Prats extends the seismogram with smoke, where plants and organic matter trace not violence but dance. Moun-tains rise in layered paint; condors soar; constellations mark their paths, lifting the gaze and articulating human experience rising from catastrophe. Prats’ smoked cartographies reject conventional symbols, translating the world into a personal, affective lexicon, where fragility, memory, and unresolved histories surface. At the core is poetry: the final elevation that veils and unveils the pulse of the earth, culminating in "light in the light, darkness upon darkness." 

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A leading voice in contemporary Chilean art, Fernando Prats represented Chile at the 54th Venice Biennale and has exhibited at the Mediations Biennale (Poland), the Cuenca Biennale (Ecuador), and the Trienal de Chile. His solo projects have been shown at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago), MACBA (Barcelona), and Museo Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá). His works are in the permanent collections of Kolumba Museum (Cologne), Fundación Palma de Mallorca, Espais d’Art (Palma), and Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago).