Enrique Fuentes

Enrique Fuentes' work is powerful, intense, mystical, enigmatic. Born in Mexico City in 1980, the artist, who now lives in Vienna and Berlin, studied painting in Jean-Michel Alberola’s master class at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2001-2009), spent a year in Tokyo, Japan, graduating in 2006 Guillaume Bijl the Salzburg Summer Academy of Fine Arts and was Arnulf Rainer's personal assistant from 2005 to 2011. His intensive preoccupation with poetry, literature and music is also clearly reflected in his oeuvre, which has been shown in galleries and museums and at art fairs all over the world. Quotations from Schubert's "Winter Journey", the Nibelungen saga or Ingeborg Bachmann can be found as well as from Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil".
Fuentes' work is still characterized by his fight for the medium of painting, which he fought against the advance of the digital in art with all his might during his studies in Paris. Influences come from the customs of his homeland, inspired by the Abstract Expressionism of the USA, but also strongly from the exchange with Arnulf Rainer and above all with the former enfant terrible of Viennese Actionism, Günther Brus, with whom he also did some exhibitions with joint series. The artistic dialogue with the almost four decades older "fatherly friend" culminates in expressive excesses of hedonism and joie de vivre, without ever forgetting death, decay and illness. Fuentes' work is a successful blend of South American temperament, Austrian equanimity, and Western Catholic tradition in syncretism with Aztec spirit worlds. “Live life!” seems to be shouting at us with his work, reminding us of a shaman – against agony – bearing in mind the archaic of beginning and end, Alfa and Omega.

Awards (selection):

• 2019: Award of the City of Graz
• 2017: Art Berlin
• 2007/08: “Leonardo” art prize
• 2006 & 2007: Raùl Gamboa Prize for Fine Arts

Exhibitions (selection):

• 2021: Kunsthaus Schmidt, Englhartszell (Upper Austria)
• 2020: Pulp Paintings, Mola, El Molinar, Mallorca, Spain; L'après-midi d'un faune, galerie art moments, Vienna, Austria
• 2019: Nous ne sommes pas les derniers, Art Karlsruhe, gallery art moments, Karlsruhe, Germany; Death and the Maiden, Galeria Laval Nugent, Zagreb, Croatia; Viva la vida, Fuentes Brus, Rudolf Budja Gallery, Salzburg, Austria; Isla Fatamorgana, Nuru Gallery, Puerto Portals, Mallorca, Spain
• 2018: Atlas Obscuro, Novomatic Forum in collaboration with gallery art moments, Vienna, Austria; Melancolia, Aaren clone rotor, Leonora Carrrington Museum, San Luis Potosi, Mexico
• 2017: Carpe Noctum Galerijy Kos, Ljubljana, Slovenia; LAT, 47.254554. Künstlerhaus Wein, Austria

Enrique Fuentes is represented by the Viennese gallery artmoments. VITALE Arts & Media Management advises the team on strategic alignment and project management.