Since the late 1940s and early 1950s, there has been talk of Rothko’s work having the power to evoke a religious experience in viewers, a curious assertion supported by the emotional reaction, sometimes tears, of those encountering his abstract forms. But if it’s possible to feel melancholy, sadness, or joy when listening to music, which is even more abstract and ethereal, why not when viewing a painting with no recognizable figures? Rothko is just one of many examples of seeking spirituality through the images of intuition—like the ancient oracles, pre-Hispanic American art, Byzantine art, or African tribal art—created from expressions of ecstasy and spirituality rather than representation. While today we may think that art and religion have always been linked by narrating stories through naturalism, historian Wilhelm Worringer warned in 1908 that this Western notion represents only a small fraction of humanity’s history, compared to thousands of years when divinity took the form of abstract images across hundreds of civilizations. Ironically, this narrow view of art became the doctrine. However, expressing the divine continues in our time, and perhaps we find a good answer to why abstraction remains relevant in contemporary art in Barnett Newman’s words:

“The painter is concerned…with the presentation of mystery in the world. His imagination, therefore, tries to dig into metaphysical secrets. To that extent, his art is concerned with the sublime. It is religious art that, through symbols, captures the fundamental truth of life.”

Jerónimo Villa is the heir of a legacy of abstract artists in Colombia who have addressed these metaphysical and existential questions through order and geometry, like Edgar Negret, Carlos Rojas, and Danilo Dueñas. At the same time, his language and search align with the innovative perspectives of contemporary artists like Bill Viola, Shirin Neshat, or James Turrell, who extend these concerns into the 21st century through diverse perspectives and mediums. Villa turns to abstraction because the concepts he wants to address and the things he seeks to express in his work lack defined physical forms, and only through that language, which ends up appearing abstract, can he symbolically bring these complex ideas to life. This approach is similar to Kandinsky or John Cage, a comparison that is not arbitrary if one considers that Villa’s initial training was in music. Thus, instead of representation, realism, or expressionism, Villa is closer to the descriptions of sound concepts that may have an equivalent in the visual arts (rhythm, repetition, canon, silences). Kandinsky and Cage broke down traditional music methods to bring sound closer to concerns that existing systems could not express, such as synesthesia, jazz, and spirituality (in Kandinsky), or Eastern philosophies and Zen Buddhism (in Cage). Villa embraces both visions, transforming them into an intimate and original body of work.

This comparison, moving from the musical to the visual, is pertinent not only due to Villa’s background in visual production but also because of the mathematical rhythm, geometry, and compositional method: the planes and sketches composed as complex instructions, like scores, and sometimes even the titles of his pieces. Music surrounds and defines his work.

Jerónimo Villa’s obsession with giving physical form to the indefinable stems from his questioning of how religions have tried to create images of a common concept: the creation of an afterlife. What is, for some, the image of a sacred space floating among the clouds, is better revealed to others through words and oral transmission. All cultures have sought to leave behind a system of representation that embodies their dogmas and precepts, even when dealing with ethereal, shapeless, or immaterial topics. There are as many religions as there are ways to seek an understanding of life, human destiny, and death. Villa’s search for a personal sense and representation system for these existential reflections drives him to create his visual universe, one detached from and resistant to organized religions (particularly Western notions of guilt, sin, and condemnation) but deeply aligned with the poetry of Eastern beliefs.

After a life journey that has led him to study all these perspectives, Villa concluded that the one best representing and aligning with his vision is Moksha, a Sanskrit term from Hinduism that refers to spiritual liberation. The term also appeals to the artist for its musicality: both for the phonetic sound of the word and because this liberation it refers to culminates in the cessation of all activity, in silence (another reference to John Cage).

What makes the representation of spirituality in art important? Kandinsky explored this need of the individual to feel ecstatic before a work of art in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, proposing a response regarding the significance of art in relation to the soul:

“These two kinds of similarities between new art and forms from past stages are radically different. The first is external and, therefore, has no future. The second is spiritual and thus carries within itself the seed of the future…

The artist has a complex, subtle life, and the work that arises from him will necessarily produce, in an audience capable of feeling them, emotions so nuanced that words cannot express them…All these genuinely artistic forms serve a purpose and are spiritual nourishment, especially when the viewer finds a connection with his soul.”

Kandinsky’s ideas align with Villa in his introspection and need to extract and materialize his unique mysticism. While some find their answers through reflection, isolation, prayer, or meditation, Villa seeks and defines spirituality through creation. Moksha, in this sense, is a series of works that allow the artist the dual function of creating a personal cosmogony aligned with his beliefs and metaphysical reflections and the possibility of building a personal imaginary and a visual system with deep symbolism. But Moksha, as a state of fullness in Eastern cultures, cannot be achieved without a spiritual process, which is why Villa frames the entire series of works as a sort of journey with a specific order, seven stages that he lists and titles in the sequence he planned:

1. To Be in Space

2. To Circle the Cycle

3. To Fall

4. To Deconstruct

5. To Transition and Connect

6. To Unify

7. To Liberate and Expand

In the first stage, the works present drawings with abstract figures, and in the second, these forms begin to take shape, gaining substance through Villa’s most representative materials, which carry the symbolic weight connecting the works and their concepts. Wood and sandpaper, present in much of his work, serve a triple function as material, form, and color. They are also crucial elements in the analogies that allow the artist to convey the existential dichotomies running through his work and thought, especially those opposites that cannot exist without one another: life and death. “Sandpaper is the executioner of wood; it doesn’t beautify it, it kills the wood and takes away its original form. I treat the two as opposites and bring them together as adversaries, opposing but coexisting without canceling each other out,” says Villa. In the same analogy, other opposites become visible in Moksha: negative and positive spaces, diptychs juxtaposing opposing colors, and compositions contrasting inside with outside. Like the yin and yang—the complementary opposing forces present in all things according to another Eastern existential view—the composition, elements, and forms of the works present a meticulously calculated balance.

This precise arrangement of all the works reveals a slow, meticulous, sometimes repetitive creation process, like a mantra. Sandpapers are stacked, cut, and folded by the thousands, then grouped on the support to give them form. The lightness of sandpaper, condensed in dozens of meters in each work, paradoxically sometimes becomes heavy blocks framed in wood. In other cases, the lightness of the piece comes from the organic shape of an irregular frame that resembles a mantra in Sanskrit. Thus, color and form complement compositions requiring breaking the traditional rectangular format to link ideas like the cyclical, the mythical ouroboros biting its tail, and the curved and dancing shapes Villa confers to wood.

The journey is always accompanied by the sparkle of carbide, the bright stone grain embedded in the paper, producing a mystical aura akin to the presence of gold in sacred iconography. Moksha never looks the same, as the effect of light on it constantly changes. Furthermore, as if it were an analogy of the human condition, the sandpaper reveals its ambiguity: beneath its abrasive function of violently wearing down wood, it hides fragility in the shining carbide grains peeling off its surface. Violence and fragility, other opposites needing balance to achieve the spiritual peace Villa seeks to represent.

Thus, we move through Villa’s works as we journey through the seven stages in his pursuit of fulfillment. This sequence is structured like a symphony, with various movements, variations, and tempos. A subtle and slow overture in To Be in Space is introduced early through small-format drawings, setting forth the abstract nature and elements of order and geometry that will progressively guide and expand throughout the journey. The final movement culminates in an apotheosis, with two monumental pieces representing spiritual liberation and the arrival at Moksha. Villa invites us into the intimacy of his beliefs and the ethereal music that permeates his work, and in doing so, he frees the abstract form from its most ornamental qualities to move us with works that speak to the soul.