ALFONSO FERNANDEZ
Alfonso Fernandez (b. 1983, Mexico City) received an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. His work has been exhibited throughout the US, including recent exhibitions at the Katzen Art Center at American University (Washington, D.C.) and Stevens Square Center for the Arts (Minneapolis, MN).
Fernandez’s paintings are social, psychological, and personal investigations. Since moving to Baltimore, his work has evolved in response to living and working in a new, unfamiliar city, taking on abstraction in the wake of unrest, representation of societal memory, and figuration through the loss of identity. Each of these investigations are grounded in Fernandez’s experience moving from Mexico to the United States and his efforts at balancing different cultures and languages, while handling the contested spaces of ethnography and assimilation.
With a direct emphasis on process as the first act of expression, Fernandez does not amplify his politics to the sound of alarms but rather, places empathy on a narrative that has been overshadowed by the ongoing friction between these two neighboring countries. Subsequently, the tenor in his works are poetic yet non-complacent as they underscore issues of immigration, drug violence and economic hardship. The paintings’ intimacy, while simultaneously enveloping the viewer, creates a space that viewers are free to enter even though its surface tension presents a layered history of displacement.