CRITICAL REVIEWS
Evocations of the Feminine
Gladys Yunes Yunes | Critic
An exploration of the visceral and the delicate, Fuentes captures the essence of the feminine through layers of vigor.
Absent body
Félix Hernández | Art Historian
The canvases speak of a presence found in absence, where the soul reflects its journey across textured silence.
Silent Steps
Katherine Chacón | Researcher
Walking through the silence of the migration experience, Fuentes maps the geography of the heart with grace.
Evocations of the Feminine
Gladys Yunes Yunes
In the paintings of Tery Fuentes, several aspects converge that form the basis of her visual discourse. On one hand, there is a perceptible chromatic gesture that energizes the entire format, thanks to an agile brushstroke that expands through contrasting, diluted, or degraded stains. The treatment she gives to color creates suggestive atmospheres, free from limiting horizons that would confine or trap the viewer's gaze. This is why her compositions convey a dreamlike quality, with shades seeming to extend beyond the edges of the canvas: yellow stripes, broken ochres, sepias, interspersed browns, and whitish blues complement the palette of this artist, who, in some cases, explores monochromatic tones as a way of focusing the viewer's attention on the sketched drawing.
On the other hand, Fuentes explores the elements of visual expression, interspersing materials that enhance the fictitious character of her canvases. Oils, acrylics, sand, stencils, newspapers, and cardboard are some of the materials she uses to support her language, which is closely related to both collage techniques and mixed media. Within this pictorial craftsmanship, we can detect a theme that deviates from traditional models of representation. Fuentes' narrative is fragmented—and if you will, materialized in segments—some of which are connected while others are not. She achieves a harmonious relationship between image and technique, figure and background, in a flow that simulates the passage of time outside of chronological order. Each piece can be seen as a mosaic from a vast framework, where memories, longings, and even traumas, shocks, experiences, or impressions, whether personal or collective, nestle in the unconscious. Seen from a distance, these pieces appear to form a kind of puzzle, made up of characters, objects, and actions that might seem inconsequential or even banal, as her stories are far from the grandiloquent rhetoric characteristic of moralizing, or instructive art.
Fuentes focuses on the fleeting nature of the present moment—the one that escapes consciousness—implicit in the repertoire of humble items, utensils, and objects with which she constructs a metaphor for the everyday. These objects also symbolize humanity, the final purpose of her creations, forming a sort of contemporary "Vanitas" that alludes to the ephemeral nature of life. Her images reflect the daily actions of existence. Her iconography revels in highlighting items like shoes, footprints, hooks for hanging clothes, motorcycles, bicycles, portraits, or unfinished nudes, among other subjects—all imbued with a feminine filter that she intentionally introduces, either through details or the dispersion and graffiti of lines that invade the entire canvas.
Gladys Yunes Yunes
Art Curator Critic and Critic
Member of AICA. International Association of Art Critics
Absent body - Reflections of the soul
Félix Hernández
Part of the subject matter explored by the artist Tery Fuentes refers to the representation of objects from her daily environment, with which she gives meaning to her intimate universe and reveals her feminine identity. Although Tery Fuentes is a painter who can be associated with an expressionist style, evident in her use of gestural, nervous strokes that possess a sign-like quality, it is essential to recognize the line as a key element in structuring her forms and delineating the contours of the objects with which she brings to the world a new concrete reality. These objects speak to us of places confined to her memory, of images nested in her soul, and of her experiences as a woman, mother, and migrant. Present in her work, these objects direct our gaze towards her own body, which remains absent. This absence is bridged by a unique and indivisible connection bound by love, joy, illusion, pain, melancholy, desire, and doubt.
This absence refers to a place awaiting to be filled, an emptiness that emerges in our interaction with others, demanding the imprint of the present body. It is corporeality, the most immediate manifestation of the artist’s visual language. From this corporeality, she dreams, speaks, expresses, imagines, and perceives in her imaginary space—those possible, real, or utopian realms she seeks to convey. The intimacy captured in Tery Fuentes' objects also speaks of the passage of time, of memories, and of the forgotten. These signs unveil a past existence, and the nostalgia of the absent body becomes intertwined with a historical perspective. If life is a story that continually reconnects us to the whole, then, when the proper bridge is built to that former existence left behind, we are able to form an understanding of what once existed—spaces preserved in the memory.
Thus, the metaphors of the absent body in Tery Fuentes' work, while often perceived as fragmented corporeality, are not an attempt to erase or negate the body. Rather, they reflect the artist’s longing for a necessary reintegration, one that unfolds in another time—time yet to be discovered, within the intimate realms of her psyche.
Félix Hernández
Art Curator and Critic
Chief Curator of the Research Department,
Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela
Silent Steps
Katherine Chacón
Silent Steps brings together some of the most outstanding works of the extensive series of paintings that Tery Fuentes has dedicated to the theme of steps. Since the beginning of her career, the artist has recurrently depicted shoes, feet and footprints, inviting the viewers to be carried away by the meanings and reflections that these everyday forms, turned into symbols by their prominence and reiteration, awaken in their minds. Fuentes not only portrays these elements, but also uses them as vehicles to talk about the passage of life, the flow of time, and the traces we leave behind.
Tery Fuentes' style, with neo-expressionist roots, is characterized by gestural strokes and an abundance of textures. The artist is not satisfied with the conventional use of pigments; she creates a kind of visual “terrain” through impasto and superimposition of layers of paint, sand, and collages of cardboard and newsprint. This approach not only enriches her pieces in tactile and expressive ways, but also underscores the relationships her work has with the layering of memory and the passing of life. The colors are equally significant: the palette of yellows and ochers evokes the soil, reinforcing the idea of that primordial, fundamental step of humankind in nature.
For the artist, this vital journey also implies a reflection on femininity and the experience of being a woman, mother, and head of a family, which is constantly expressed in her work. In pieces such as Family, Fuentes represents the members of her home through their shoes, a symbolic act that emphasizes the crucial role of women in the home and in the journey of life.
The works in this exhibit are closely linked to the artist's life, marked by constant changes and migrations. Having lived in several countries, Fuentes has directly experienced what Antonio Machado expressed in his famous poem: there is no predefined path to follow; the path is created with each step taken, and the footprints are evidence of the passage through life. Footprints and shoes, therefore, become metaphors for the relentless walking of all who are alive, and for the physical, mental and energetic marks that we all leave behind as we exist and travel the world. In this way, the artist transforms each footprint and each step into a personal and universal story, a reflection on the place we inhabit, belonging, and the multiple identities that are formed and transformed over time.
Katherine Chacón
Writer, curator, critic and art teacher
tery.fuentesg@gmail.com