Dolby Chadwick Gallery is pleased to announce Empire, an exhibition of new works by Gonzalo Fuenmayor, on view from May 2 to June 1, 2019. Born in Colombia but resident in the United States for most of his adult life, Fuenmayor has cultivated a practice that explores processes of cultural assimilation, colonialization, and exoticization. Empire draws on these past through-lines while also advancing beyond to think through new tensions and, in the process, reconsidering the visual language of his charcoal-on-paper medium.
This exhibition examines how we survive past empires, both political and personal. Though these empires today lie in ruins, their rules and structures often remain present, dictating norms and behaviors regardless of whether they are compatible with our professed contemporary values or ideal ways of being. Fuenmayor invites symbols of these past realms into his works and juxtaposes them with elements that oppose or resist. His goal is to set up complex matrices that instigate a thoughtful negotiation on the part of the viewer. How does the coming together of these disparate elements force one to look at the past’s impact on the present in new ways? How does it shift our expectations about our cultural and political realities as well as our individual emotional and psychological terrains?
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