This unique physical creation treats a massive tempered wood pegboard as an analytical laboratory for sub-surface social research, exploring human behavior and daily rules with a critical eye and nostalgic humor. The composition tracks an intense graphic rhythm, isolating deconstructed shoe vectors that flip across the frame, wrapped in a glossy matrix of raw acrylic coatings, aggressive graphite scratches, and vibrant oil pastel blocks. By superposing white fluid paint drips with paper transfers collected from thrift store magazines and photo albums, the artist adds common idioms and popular culture insights from his Venezuelan childhood that touch on personal themes of dreams, fears, and memories.
The images come from old magazines, advertising and photo albums collected at thrift stores creating a mixed media artwork. By extracting them from their natural context, he reconstructs them by adding references to popular culture as well as common phrases and insights that come from his Venezuelan childhood.
Fonfria's work explores human behavior and social rules with a critical eye and humor, touching on personal themes such as dreams, fears, and memories. The images come from old magazines, advertising, and photo albums collected at thrift stores. By extracting them from their natural context, he reconstructs them by adding references to popular culture as well as common phrases and insights that come from his Venezuelan childhood.
Purchase this original, unique mixed-media artwork by Roberto Fonfría directly through The Art Design Project platform.
Original Mixed Media Artwork - San Francisco Shoes, 2013. By Roberto Fonfria
Sugar Pops, 2013
Acrylic, graphite, oil pastel, and paper transferred on tempered wood pegboard
Dimensions: 47.6 H x 48 W in.
One of a kind
Mix media
Mounted on wood pegboard
Roberto Fonfría (1969) born in Caracas, Venezuela, examines questions of consciousness, identity, happiness, humor, boredom, masculinity, money and aging, exposing the centrality of time that belongs to each piece. His collages live on thanks to his curious hands that choose specific pieces of paper, cardboard, thread, photographs and clippings, and are reworked on a surface to construct a different meaning, a new identity, a new narrative. Uniting disciplines as broad as photographic transfers with drawing and writing. His method of creation consists of using images from old magazines, advertisements and photo albums, modifying them and adding references to popular culture, common phrases and reflections from his childhood in Venezuela. Finally he makes “analogical” modifications using practical methods, painting, drawing and writing.
