Rafael Mago was born on January 24, 1991, in Mérida, Venezuela, where he also completed his primary and secondary education. In 2010, he began his studies at the University of the Andes, enrolling in the Graphic Design program. In 2012, he expanded his academic training by simultaneously starting a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts at the same institution. He successfully completed both degrees in 2019. He currently lives and works in Georgia, United States, where he continues to develop his career in the fields of arts.

 

In 2016, Rafael Mago held his first solo exhibition, Montañas 1, at the Museo de Arte Moderno Juan Astorga Anta in Mérida, Venezuela. This exhibition marked the beginning of his artistic career, establishing a visual approach rooted in the exploration of environment, materiality, and form.

 

Since then, he has participated in several group exhibitions both in Venezuela and internationally. In 2019, his work was featured in Luces 234+2 at Espacio Proyecto Libertad in Mérida, an exhibition he also joined in its 2020 edition. That same year, he took part in GPS8 N66 O, organized by Assotiation D3 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in Materia Prima at Galería Sicart in Barcelona, Spain. These collective exhibitions have allowed his work to engage in dialogue across different geographies, contexts, and contemporary discourses.

 

About his work, the artist mentions that drawing, graphite, and paper are the fundamental materials he uses to explore the nature. Thought is often understood as an internal process, separate from the actions that take place in the world. However, in his work, these drawings evoke action to merge a mental experience with a physical one, bringing to light a new reality of fleeting, personal visions. Through mental maps, they reveal an imaginary yet existent territory, shaped by a personal worldview composed of topographies and terrains that continually take form.

 

His drawing process begins with the study of spatial topographic maps, applying a reflective attention to landscape as a mental space—a process reminiscent of the approach of Romantic painters Caspar David Friedrich and J.M.W. Turner, who infused their landscape paintings with a pursuit of the sublime. His work shares this approach, seeking the sublime through landscape.

 

He defines drawing as a way of exploring and observing, a tool to articulate what is seen. As a draftsman, he considers himself an inventor: every decision is visible in the final piece, representing a form of visual thinking that exists in the present moment and is always filled with the potential for further refinement. From the coded natural space, these drawings transport us to an interior/exterior landscape whose main virtue is to show how spatial topographic landscapes can be both beautiful and sublime through traditional graphite and paper drawing.

 

The intention is not to reproduce the landscape, but to produce it through mental processes via drawing—not to let the nature of the landscape become drawing, but rather the reverse; poiesis, not mimesis; percepts, not perceptions.