Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Mac II, Charcoal on paper painting (Framed)

2020

Gonzalo Fuenmayor's work reflects a double cultural influence that has inexorably marked his artistic practice: Hispanic and North American. His childhood and youth were spent in one of the cities that best embodies the essence of the Caribbean city (Barranquilla) and his professional activity has been developed in the United States, where he currently lives and works. His artistic research questions the 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. The latter has symbolized like no other fruit the paradox of abundance and poverty, being at the same time food for the population and the cause of the exploitation of the peasantry in the plantations in what has been called the "banana drama". The artist seeks to combine in his works a narrative line where the decorative and the tragic come together in a discourse that borrows resources from literature, cinema, and advertising. His discourse is thus formed from irony and parody; the artist fuses seemingly unrelated objects and creates images that he himself defines as "visual grafts" where the contrast between form and its signifier takes on a new reading that provokes the viewer's reflection.