“Paper chopping turned my main mode of expression, serving as my music, dance, and prayer.”
A Life Lower Into Paper
For Tlacaelel Fuentes, paper carries the drive of reminiscence, motion, and cultural continuity. His minimize paper observe attracts on Mexican papel picado whereas extending its pierced surfaces and rhythmic repetition into a private visible language formed by abstraction, portraiture, theatrical composition, and Southwestern references. Throughout a long time of labor, he has handled the elimination of fabric as an lively type of drawing. The minimize edge turns into line, surviving paper turns into mass, and every opening admits gentle as a part of the picture. This steadiness between restraint and abundance offers his compositions their distinctive vitality, permitting figures, symbols, and decoration to shift frequently between presence and absence.
That relationship with paper started when he was 5. Throughout a kindergarten train with coloured paper and scissors, a instructor opened a cupboard stacked with sheets in vivid hues. The sight stayed with him, turning an peculiar classroom materials into the premise of a lifelong self-discipline. Paper chopping ultimately turned, in his phrases, his “music, dance, and prayer.” The phrase captures how totally the observe connects bodily motion, visible thought, and private devotion. His every day studio routine now facilities on chopping and framing, whereas his compositions have moved from less complicated geometric buildings towards extra dynamic explorations of motion, equilibrium, and the complexities of human expertise.
His title displays a equally deliberate strategy of cultural and private definition. Born Patrick Trujillo, he modified Patrick to Patricio in recognition of his Chicano heritage. Fellow artist and poet Cecilio “Xilo” Garcia Camarillo later advised Tlacaelel, evaluating Fuentes’s dedication to supporting different creatives with the historic determine he describes as an architect of Aztec tradition who helped create circumstances wherein artisans might maintain their crafts. Fuentes additionally adopted his mom’s surname, Fuentes, following Mexican naming traditions and honoring his household lineage. The total moniker, Patricio Tlacaelel Trujillo y Fuentes, binds heritage, household, artwork, and repair into a reputation he carries with delight.
Tlacaelel Fuentes: Choreographing Optimistic and Unfavourable House
Fuentes’s visible vocabulary is rooted in papel picado, the normal Mexican observe of chopping or chiseling tissue paper into ornamental designs seen all through group celebrations. He connects this lineage with artists equivalent to José Guadalupe Posada, but his personal work strikes past conventional frameworks. Pierced surfaces, symmetry, repetition, and ornamental rhythm stay vital, however they assist compositions that may incorporate giant scale abstraction, portraiture, cultural symbolism, and complicated spatial development. Sweeping curves, circles, crescents, grids, botanical kinds, and solutions of human or animal figures interlock in order that a picture can seem recognizable in a single prompt and dissolve into decoration within the subsequent.
Motion is key to that instability. Fuentes educated in New York Metropolis with fashionable dance lecturers Paul Sanasardo, Martha Graham, and Could O’Donnell, and the affect is seen in the best way kinds appear to pivot, sweep, and counterbalance throughout the floor. Curves can learn like bodily gestures, repeated shapes set up visible beats, and even compositions constructed round grids or bilateral symmetry resist full stillness. Slightly than treating the sheet as a hard and fast subject, he organizes it with the sensitivity of somebody attentive to choreography, weight, timing, and the stress between a physique and the house surrounding it.
Skilled theater additional formed his sense of scale and staging. His expertise with El Teatro Campesino, La Compania de Teatro de Albuquerque, and one man exhibits contributed to compositions wherein silhouettes, framing gadgets, and powerful contrasts seem to carry out inside bounded house. A collaboration with photographer Oscar Lozoya added one other layer, sharpening Fuentes’s consideration to tone, distinction, and gradations between gentle and shadow. These disciplines don’t sit beside the paper cuts as separate chapters. They converge within the work, the place choreography guides rhythm, theater informs dramatic association, and pictures strengthens the expressive relationship between darkness and uncovered paper.
When Coloration Turns into Structure
Coloration offers Fuentes two distinct registers of expression. In predominantly black and white works, extreme distinction creates a graphic depth near shadow theater. Black can function directly as contour, environment, and strong mass, whereas untouched or opened areas operate as lively gentle. This economic system makes each minimize consequential. A single opening can separate determine from floor, redirect the attention, or rework a dense silhouette right into a porous construction. The ensuing photographs display how absence isn’t merely what has been eliminated. It is likely one of the central visible supplies by which the composition good points readability, rhythm, and psychological cost.
His polychrome works generate a distinct sensation. Saturated reds, yellows, turquoise blues, greens, and oranges recall stained glass, competition ornament, and Southwestern gentle. Ventana Rosa (Rose Window) is a key instance. The intricate minimize paper work was conceived to evoke the architectural grandeur of conventional stained glass whereas retaining a powerful Southwestern aesthetic. Its round, window like construction organizes radiant colour round a agency central axis. A yellow cross references the Zia image, whereas stylized formline figures and crimson and inexperienced accents join the composition to the cultural heritage of the area.
The historical past of Ventana Rosa additionally marks an vital institutional milestone. The Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico invited Fuentes to curate an exhibition centered on Chicano artists in New Mexico from the Nineteen Seventies to the current. He included Ventana Rosa in that exhibition, and the museum later acquired the work for its everlasting assortment. The acquisition locations a personally vital piece inside an establishment linked to the area that informs its imagery. Fuentes can be represented by Michael Gorman Gallery in Taos and Cruz Gallery in Española, New Mexico, extending the general public presence of a observe that has appeared in galleries, museums, artwork festivals, high-quality eating institutions, and print and digital publications.
Tlacaelel Fuentes: A Observe Constructed for Continuance
Fuentes maintains a every day studio observe, persevering with to chop paper, body completed works, and broaden the viewers for his artwork. The fidelity of that routine displays a relationship with the medium that started in childhood however has by no means remained static. Over time, fundamental geometry has given approach to more and more animated compositions involved with steadiness, human expertise, cultural inheritance, transformation, nature, ceremony, and interconnectedness. Recognizable indicators and bodily kinds are sometimes absorbed into bigger decorative programs slightly than fastened into simple illustration, leaving viewers to maneuver between image, silhouette, sample, and open house.
That lengthy growth continues by a busy interval in 2026. Fuentes lists the New Mexico State Honest in Albuquerque, operating September 10 by 20, amongst his upcoming highlights. In September, his work can be scheduled for a full web page showcase in ArtNews’ annual “High 200” collectors concern, putting his portfolio earlier than a global readership of collectors, galleries, and establishments. From October 7 by 10, he’s scheduled to indicate at SPECTRUM Chicago, sponsored by Redwood Artwork Group and hosted at The Mart. Collectively, these appearances prolong a profession grounded within the studio into new exhibition and publishing contexts.
But the clearest measure of Fuentes’s dedication isn’t a calendar of appearances however his description of how lengthy he intends to work. He says he’ll preserve chopping paper till, “like a bit of church mouse, they decide me up by the tail and toss me away.” The humor carries a severe conviction. Paper has accompanied him from a childhood encounter with a cupboard of coloured sheets to museum collections and gallery illustration, whereas absorbing the teachings of dance, theater, pictures, and Chicano cultural reminiscence. In his palms, chopping stays each a technical self-discipline and a mind-set by picture, structure, motion, and light-weight.
