Gonzalo Fuenmayor: The Impeccable Draftsman

Gonzalo Fuenmayor: Un dibujante impecable
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translation:

Gonzalo Fuenmayor: The Impeccable Draftsman
A master of sublime charcoal technique, patiently laborious in his drawings as well as in his researching processes, he executes large-format works that hardly go unnoticed. On this occasion, Gonzalo Fuenmayor joins Colección Arteria with a piece on the last page of this edition.
David Guzmán
A native of Barranquilla, Colombia, Gonzalo Fuenmayor (1977) has been producing art for more than a decade, using bananas as a theme with various techniques. He has depicted them in paintings, charcoal drawings, and photographs, and he has placed them, as they are found in nature, in his own installations.
Fuenmayor is a master of the charcoal drawing, to the point that his works could be easily confused with black-and-white photographs, except that in the images he creates there appear objects that are not usually seen together, like palm trees inside a theater, swans in Cochabamba (Bolivia), or Victorian chandeliers hanging from clusters of bananas.
Devotion to his craft is what defines him since he can focus on a single drawing for up to three months: "I was very much interested in exploring the act of drawing where patience, magnitude, gesture, and light come together," he said.
Fuenmayor explained that he initially became interested in this fruit because he wanted to make "an act of 'self-exotization' when I was living in Boston (MA)." He started painting them on a large scale, in a state of decomposition, and eventually, and as he continued creating more works, his ideas about it developed and changed.
Initially, he worked on it as a reference to Andy Warhol's Pop Art; then, as an allusion to Freud's ideas through the exploration of the sexual potential of the image; and, later, he included narratives that alluded to the political and historical relationship of the United Fruit Company with Colombia. "It was an anchor I used to explore several issues that were relevant to me or that I was interested in," he said.
Fuenmayor was trained as an artist at The School of Visual Arts in New York City (Class of 2000) and, subsequently, in 2004, he graduated from the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston with a Master's degree.
Right off from the start, he focused his efforts on nationality and memory. The origin of the powerful images this artist has constructed from bananas and Victorian motifs can be traced back to the show he had in Miami, in 2009, entitled "Pornorama." In it, he built an installation at Dot Fiftyone Gallery, in which he laid out bananas with Victorian engravings which, eventually, would oxidize while the reliefs began to darken. Although the exhibit placed more emphasis on the banana's sexual symbolism, the mixture of radiance, ornamentation, decadence, and memory was already present.
The following year, in the exhibition "Radiance," he showed a series of charcoal drawings in which he coupled bunches of bananas with furniture and Victorian chandeliers, symbolizing the relationship between the ornamental, as a deception, and the tragic, alluding to the controversial past surrounding the farming and trade of bananas in Colombia, in particular to the so-called Massacre of the Banana Plantations, which occurred on December 6, 1928, in Ciénaga (Colombia). The show opened in April 2010 at Galería Mundo in Bogotá.
In the years that followed, Fuenmayor continued his work that revolved around hybridization, exoticism, and identity in large-format charcoal drawings, which he included in the exhibitions "Tropicalia" in Miami in 2011, as well as in "They Say I Came Back Americanized" in San Francisco in 2013.
The most recent pieces by Fuenmayor in connection with these concepts are being currently shown at The Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, in the exhibition "Tropical Mythologies." This exhibition came to be as a result of his traveling to Leticia and Ciénaga (both in Colombia) with the support of the Traveling Fellowship granted to him by MFA. "It is a grant provided by the museum to go to any place in the world that an artist may consider to be important to his work," elaborated Fuenmayor, who was selected in 2012.
Undoubtedly, patience is one of his attributes, because he consistently applied for the grant time after time for nine years, until he was finally chosen by the judges. Originally, he had proposed to travel to different European cities with great artistic traditions; however, his application was rejected time and again. However, he who persists wins out in the end. "When the last and final chance I had to apply came, I thought about the Amazon jungle as the most exotic place in Colombia and in a plantation of bananas in Ciénaga." And at last the Traveling Fellowship was granted to him.
In March 2013, he spent a week with the native community "Siete de Agosto." The artist considered it important for his work, which focused on identity and hybridization, to visit the borderline of three countries.
The Amazon region is "a very porous border," referring to the fact that the locals don't care that much if they happen to be in Brazil, in Colombia, or in Peru. They all see themselves as residents of the same place. "It was very interesting to see these people, after we had gone fishing and hunting, returning home to their huts to watch a Real Madrid team soccer match on Direct TV."
From Leticia he traveled to a banana plantation in Santa Cruz de Papare in Ciénaga. This was a significant and edifying experience for his work: "I had been aware of the entire history of the banana through books and films; however, I had never been in direct contact with the source," he said.
During his stay at the plantation, Fuenmayor hung chandeliers from bunches of bananas and, with the help of a gas-powered electricity generator, he turned on the lights, bringing to life those exotic images he had given shape to in his charcoal drawings. He took pictures of them for what he called the "Papare Project," and he's currently showing them within the framework of the "Tropical Mythologies" exhibition.
During the Art Basel Fair in Miami in 2014, he had already brought those chandeliers to life. There, he arranged them hanging from clusters of bananas in a dining room at the Faena Hotel, in an installation he titled "Eden," which had a great impact on the art fair visitors.
"Tropical mythologies," his current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, will run until September 13th. He will probably have a show at the Galería El Museo in the coming year.
Translated from the Spanish by Miguel Falquez-Certain

"Gringoland." Charcoal drawing on paper, 60" x 52" (152 cm x 132 cm) (2014) Courtesy of: Gonzalo Fuenmayor

Photo: Karin Stefan. Courtesy of: Gonzalo Fuenmayor
Gonzalo Fuenmayor uses bananas as symbols