I consider myself a painter who is ironically using drawing as a medium.
Throughout his work, Gonzalo Fuenmayor questions what it means to be a Latin American artist. As a Colombian immigrant to the United States, he has frequently encountered assumptions that his work will include vibrant colors and tropical motifs. Instead, he deliberately limits his palette to black and white and ironically uses anticipated imagery in unexpected ways. Here the lush leaves of a philodendron plant twist their way around the activated body of a figure in a suit—whether the individual is fighting against the plant’s grip or joyously dancing beneath its foliage is unclear. In that ambiguity rests the possibility that it’s both. The multiple possibilities are key. Fuenmayor notes that, “I have a hard time labeling art as contemporary, modern, Latin, American, conceptual, etc. Many times these labels limit the scope of the meaning of what art can be. Personally, art offers a way to access and learn about the world by continually questioning and challenging personal paradigms and expectations.”
