Fernando Jaramillo Vélez is an artist who seems to live in a world in which surfaces have a teeming layer of organic detail that the rest of us cannot see. In his Oxidente series he uses oil and acid to mar metal plates, creating forms both partially representational and wholly evocative — spirits of burning fire leaping through darkened woods (“Salto”), or amorphous armless bodies wading silently through water (“Fecundación”). His “Sintaná”, from the Kogui oil & canvas series, looks like a Joan Miró that has somehow melded with a lattice of semi-biological computer chips, while “La Creación” is a joyful blue-gold soup of paramecia. Now living in Bogotá, Vélez grew up in the sea-side city of Santa Marta, Columbia’s oldest Spanish-founded settlement, spending much of his childhood observing aquatic animals and collecting shells. Perhaps it’s natural, then, that his paintings crawl and shimmer with life.
See more of his portfolio on his website (http://www.fernandojaramillo.com) and at Saatchi Online (http://www.saatchionline.com/ferchoman).
