Luis Fernando Zapata (1951–1994) is an artist whose work constitutes a profound meditation on human fragility, spirituality, and the permanence of memory. Through sculptures, reliefs, and ritual objects created between 1988 and 1994, Zapata conceived art as a space of transition between the earthly and the eternal, intertwining influences from Mesoamerican, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian cultures with a reflection on the body and time.
His practice, developed primarily in Paris during the late 1980s, solidified as an act of aesthetic resistance against the impact of HIV. In dialogue with his life experience, his work becomes a silent manifesto of transcendence: each barge, stele, or sarcophagus stands as
a symbolic threshold —a "door of light" to the immemorial.
Both our exhibits, at the gallery and in Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, titled "The Immemorial," allude to the concept formulated by Jean-François Lyotard, who defines it as "that which cannot be remembered or forgotten, it is that which returns uncannily." In Zapata's works, matter—paper pulp, natural pigments, and organic objects—acquires a sacred dimension, evoking relics of ancient civilizations and configuring an archaeology of the soul.
Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the artist's passing, we have revisited the works safeguarded for three decades by the safekeeper of his legacy, Alonso Garces, and now resurface as a testament to a sensibility ahead of its time.
The work of Luis Fernando Zapata is now part of prestigious institutional collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York), the Banco de la República Museum (Bogotá), and the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO),a beqieth to the Guggenheim Museum NY as well as prominent private collections in the Americas, Europe, and Latin America.
At a time when contemporary art revisits notions of ritual, body, and spirituality, Zapata's work acquires a luminous relevance, revealing art's capacity to endure as a testament to the human soul.
