I by no means bought to satisfy my grandfather José, however there’s an anecdote about him that completely defines who we Fuentes Fuertes are. He bought his driver’s license at fifty, and his first automotive was a 600 that bought stolen barely every week after he purchased it. When he managed to avoid wasting up for one more one, he selected a cadmium yellow Seat 133 and determined to exchange the bumpers with picket ones. He was a carpenter. I generally image him driving that new automotive, proud, crossing the town with the bumpers he made himself. That picture all the time makes me snort. With out realizing it, he’s the origin of lots of the gestures we nonetheless repeat in our household: this manner of believing that the whole lot will be improved if we contact it with our arms, if we remodel it just a bit. That’s who we’re. We prefer to intervene, to change and produce new that means to the on a regular basis—all the time by artwork.
On this physique of labor, and in step with household custom, I wished to supply my very own tackle the classical oil portrait and pay tribute to the whole lot that occurs when one drives or is being pushed. To these intimate sensations of shifting towards a spot the place one thing is about to unfold. I imagined the automotive as a small stage, the place mild and shadow fall in suggestive methods, able to be painted with precision. I additionally thought concerning the curvilinear geometries of automobiles, which right here I isolate, crop, and raise out of context to find new potentialities inside them.
The Drivers is an exhibition of varieties, colours, textures, and nostalgia—the type of colour that vehicles, and our streets, have regularly misplaced through the years. These works collect reminiscences and tales lived inside a car. In addition they comprise journeys, love tales, desires, associates, and strangers portrayed alongside the vehicles of their lives. Once I mentioned goodbye to my black 2004 Micra, I cried my eyes out. With it, I let go of my twenties, 1000’s of kilometers, and a model of myself that received’t return. It was a devoted companion for fifteen years. Once I see one prefer it on the road, I can’t assist however smile at it the identical method I smile at canine. —Carla Fuentes
