Tony Vázquez Figueroa
Bio
Caracas, Venezuela (1970). Multidisciplinary visual artist, he has lived between Mexico City and Miami for more than a decade. Educated at the Slade School of Painting in London; New York studio School/ New York Academy of Art in New York; San Alejandro Art Academy, Cuba; and the BFA -Film- Emerson College in Boston. With solo and group exhibitions in major cities in the United States, France, Korea, Venezuela, Guatemala, Panama and Cuba. Among his recognitions, stand out the Oolite Creator's Award, Miami, Fl (2020); Artgrant recipient, U.S.A(2020); Honorable Mention Long Beach Island Foundation for the Arts and Sciences, NJ.(2017); among others. Some of his works are part of the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Lowe Museum Miami, Museum of Latin American Art-California (MO- LAA), Black Gold Museum-Riyadh, among others.
Statement
His project focuses on oil as a foundational icon of Venezuela's socio-economic history. A systematic inquiry into the coveted "black gold" -a non-renewable substance- which he uses as a symbolic and metaphorical material to conceptualize his formal searches; also, to analyze the fall of the myths of modernity, the expectations of progress and the utopia of happiness. He makes use of diverse media and representation techniques -painting, sculpture, assemblage and photography-, using crude oil and its synthetic derivatives, bitumen, rubber and resins to configure a set of varied works. Each one of them contributes to the experimentation of materials and impeccable production practices, which entail a process of resignification and transmutation of the codes of a contemporary aesthetic imprint, avoiding discursive literalness.
