Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Gonzalo Fuenmayor (b. 1977, Barranquilla, Colombia) is a Miami-based artist whose large-scale charcoal drawings explore the collision between cultural identity, colonial legacy, and the aesthetics of excess. His work examines the effects of modernization on Latin American culture, particularly how it is internationally codified through exoticism, stereotypes, and visual clichés. Rather than simply denouncing these narratives, Fuenmayor interrogates their symbolic power and seductive appeal. He holds an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Queens Museum, and The Baker Museum. Fuenmayor has received awards such as the 2022 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the 2020 EFG Latin American Art Award, the 2018 Ellies Creator Award, and the 2015 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship. His work is held in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, among others. He is represented by Dot Fiftyone Gallery (Miami), Dolby Chadwick Gallery (San Francisco), Fernando Pradilla (Madrid), and Galería El Museo (Bogotá). 

Artist Statement

Drawing on charcoal becomes the main focus of my practice; specifically the choreographed ballet between two opposing gestures: adding charcoal and erasing it. Through my practice I've been 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. My aim is not to exclusively denounce banalization, but also to understand its aesthetic mechanisms and cultural power. 

I am interested on how ornamentation with its grace and excess has the capacity to camouflage and overshadow questionable circumstances of all kind. In my recent work, symbols and structures from the past are adopted and interact with opposing tropical elements, providing different ways of assimilating the past and present, as well as challenging expectations about cultural and political realities within individual emotional and psychological terrains. 

The theatricality and dramatic nature of the imagery used for my drawings, subordinates the contradictory into a delicate and imaginative order, evoking a certain kind of reconciliation or tense harmony between two disjointed realities.