This Burning World

"Varela’s use of the diptych form suggests many things: a Warholian endorsement of dispersed attention, a citation to image-in-image news media, an act of forced similitude. Unlike Warhol’s treatment of the diptych, Varela is not ambivalent to these images, which shift between personal observation, archival materials, commercial and news images, all cited to state an unambiguous outrage[...] the whole of it is weighted with heavy omens, that this age of cruelty and menace is still only in its infancy." -Stephen Broomer