El Museo

Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Bio

Gonzalo Fuenmayor studied Visual Arts and Art Education at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was awarded a full scholarship from The Keith Haring Foundation. He also obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA in 2004. He has received various distinctions, including the EFG Bank Latin America Art Award, a nomination for the Florida Prize 2018 at the Orlando Museum of Art in FL, the 2015 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists, first place in the Bidimensional Salon 2013 at the Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño in Bogotá, a Creation Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2013, and an Honorable Mention in the Third Edition of the Fernando Botero Award in 2007. Fuenmayor has exhibited extensively in Colombia, the United States, and Europe. In 2015, he held an individual exhibition titled "Tropical Mythologies" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has also participated in exhibitions such as "Caribbean Crossroads" at the Queens Museum in NY and "Contemporary Florida" at the Naples Museum, FL in 2011.

Statement

Gonzalo Fuenmayor's work reflects the dual cultural influence that has inexorably shaped his artistic practice: the Hispanic and the North American. His artistic research questions Caribbean identity as a brand and the stereotypes that this concept has generated through images that have become local symbols, such as the toucan, the pineapple, the palm tree, and, especially, the banana. Fuenmayor's work represents a reflection on identity and the sociopolitical conditions of developing countries like Colombia. The artist aims to combine a narrative line in his works, where the decorative and the tragic merge in a discourse that borrows resources from literature, cinema, and advertising. It's not coincidental that Fuenmayor has found his means of expression in the classic technique of charcoal and uses chiaroscuro to seek light from shadows. From intensely worked black backgrounds, he achieves these points of light that outline and illuminate the motifs in his works, those immense chandeliers formed by clusters of bananas. In this way, the artist eliminates the use of color commonly associated with the tropics and adopts black and white as a means to define his hybrid identity.

Gonzalo Fuenmayor
Title: Macondo en llamas
Medium: Carboncillo sobre papel
Year: 2023
Dimensions: 57 x 76 cm
Wall reference
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in

Other works of El Museo

Other galleries

Espacio Líquido
Instituto Cultural de México en Miami
Prima Galería
Valerie's
BLOC Art Perú
Macondo en llamas