Gonzalo Fuenmayor has questioned the ideas of what a Latin American artist should be. He makes drawings and installations which persistently deal with two major topics for him: cultural hybridity and transnational identity. Concerned about the effects of modernization and progress not only on natural environments, but mostly on Latin American culture and its ways of being displayed internationally through stereotypes and common places. His aim seems to be not exclusively, to denounce banalization but also to understand its aesthetic mechanisms and cultural power. In the last years he produced large-scale charcoal drawings (of subjects such as palms, storms, royal interiors and furniture), by which he explores tropical symbols in a surreal contact with an opulent and elegant imagery. His work triggers political and sensitive responses, as its stands firmly in the vernacular and artistic tradition of ornament, deeply rooted in the subcontinent.
Gonzalo Fuenmayor (b. 1977, Barranquilla, Colombia) has re-launched these conceptions in a worldwide spectre. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in USA, Latin America and Europe. His work was recently showcased in The Florida Prize 2018, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando; a solo exhibition “Tropical Mythologies” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2015; “Caribbean Crossroads," at the Queens Museum, NY; as well as recent solo shows at Dot Fiftyone Gallery in 2018 and Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco, in 2016.
