Fernando García Vásquez
Bio
Fernando García Vásquez obtained in 2003 his undergraduate degree in Fine Art with an emphasis in art history and painting at the National University of Colombia. In 2009 he completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, developing as a research topic "The originality of the ideas of artists in the creative processes for the elaboration of works of art". He has collectively exhibited his work nationally and internationally, such as the Banco de la República of Colombia, the Colombian Chamber of Commerce, the Kawasaki Museum in Japan, among others. His work is in private collections in North and South America, Australia, and Europe. In turn, he works as a teacher in the areas of research-creation, painting, and art history at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidad del Atlántico in Barranquilla, Colombia.
Statement
Fernando García Vásquez's work explores ideas concerning absence, silence, and their relationship to the re-presented image. It is also focused on highlighting different aspects of the national, traditional and local culture of the Colombian Caribbean.
Using traditional manual techniques, his series ‘El Eslabón Perdido’ (‘Missing link’) is made up of small format oil paintings, which are reminiscent of reproductions taken from the pages of an art history book. Familiar images are borrowed and their inhabitants removed, like the communities thrown adrift by the conflict in Colombia, the artist's nation. His work takes us towards an evocative act; we search for memories of an existence that is now gone. The images have become "naked paintings" that are full of paradoxes. What was once familiar becomes strange, what was funny can also feel ominous, and what was silent now speaks loudly.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
