fernando at his art studio in los angeles california with his dog paco
"robotitos"Media Contact: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 13, 2007
Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno
The Municipal Museum of Modern Art PRESENTS A
SOLO EXHIBITION OF THE ECUADORIAN ARTIST
FERNANDO COELLAR-MARQUEZ
gagones y dulzuras
Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno
December 13, 2007 –January 13, 20008
To commemorate the 450th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Cuenca, the Municipal Museum of Modern Art is honored to present Gagones y Dulzuras, a solo exhibition of Fernando Coellar, that coincides this year with the artist’s 45th birthday, born in Cuenca in 1962. The exhibition opens December 13 at 6:30pm and will be exhibited until January 13, 2008.
Magic surrealism is Fernando’s pictoric language. The design of his work, the theatrics of his scenes and the characters that inhabit them, and the ornamental richness, invite the viewer to travel through time reliving those unforgettable moments of his childhood, where fantastic characters and spiritual iconographies co-exist in a fabulously mythical world; with abundance and intensity of color, his work summarizes the rich popular culture of Cuenca.
Representations with strong chromatic impressions come alive within the scenic compositions of Coellar, and create an enormous surrealist charge based on a richness of elements that conduct the spectator to an intimate relationship with the fantastic world of his childhood. For the artist this exhibition is very personal and very cuencan. “It will be – he says – a great rejoice for the spirits from Cuenca that accompany me because it is a re-encounter with them but also with the whole city.”
Fernando Coellar has been living in the United States for more than 20 years. Still, his cuencan influence prevails in all his creations. He manages to navigate with great success between both the cuancan culture and the existing plurality in Los Angeles, developing with his creativity a brilliant combination of surreal and magical influences, which leads him to achieve new levels of visual expression in design; that is why among his clients are Haute Couture Houses, Entertainment Companies, and other corporations, many of which are in the Fortune 500 list.
From 1987 to 1995, Coellar was Director of Art at Roshu Inc., one of the most important scenic prop companies in Hollywood. In 1996 he joined Merv Griffith Productions as Creative Director designing visual environments for hundreds of clients including: Paul Allen/Vulcan, Inc., Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Lladró, Ron Burkle, MTV, Dolce & Gabbana, InStyle Magazine, Travel & Leisure Magazine, among others. In 2003 Fernando launched his own visual design, artistic direction and production company: Pink Elephants Inc. dedicated to the innovation and creativity of visual expression. His client list includes: Hermes, Prada, Chanel, Versace, St Johns, Marc Jacobs, Louis Verdad, Old Navy, The Walt Disney Company, Buena Vista Pictures, ABC Studios, Fox Studios, Universal, Mattel, Disney Store, and The Golden Globes.
The exhibition includes twenty-eight works of art and one installation, all with very suggestive titles that evoke that fantastic world of his childhood: Los Disfrazados(The Disguised ) a series of six paintings titled: El Payaso (The Clown), La Bruja (The Witch), El Zorro (The Fox), La Princesa (The Princess), La Calavera (The Skeleton) and El Diablo (The Devil); among others are: Capuli y Gagones (Cherry Tree and Gagones), Marcha de los Algodones de Azúcar (The Marching Cotton Candies), Shugshis, El Ángel con Gagon (The Angel with Gagon)and El Diablo con Gagon (The Devil with Gagon); Amigas con Pecado (Friends with Sin).
Fernando comments that “in his drawings – the question of the eyes is primordial; huge eyes like recorders through which the world arrives, are… the windows of the space ship from which everything is seen.” About the gagones, mythic and phantasmagoric beings recurring in his art work, Fernando says: “I don’t know, nobody knew if that white creature was a baby cat, baby dog or a combination of both. My grandmother said: the gagones were those little animals, friends of the dwarfs, the owls and the night. They stroll and play along the gables and roofs of the city of my dreams, and with their cries denounce the incestuous, the insolent godparents, the lecherous, and all others who live in sin for having those forbidden relations. That’s why, if you catch them, their forehead is smudged with the black smoke denouncing those sinners, not that we are interested in knowing, no!... But as time went by, I stopped fearing them and I came to adore them when I discovered that these mythical and playful creatures are a product of a sweet genuine act of love!!! In their honor I baptized this exhibition “Gagones y Dulzuras”.”
Fernando, without a doubt is a born artist, his world is that of fairies, dwarfs, gagones, headless priests, ghosts, and that huge legacy of fantasy and magic that surrounds us as children and that few as adults continue having. Fernando is one of them, which allows him to transmute to his work this huge, marvelous and magical internal baggage that leads us to fantasize and remember things almost forgotten, yet kept in that trunk of remembrance called memory. Even so, whether he is painting or directing a fashion show, film premiere, or the launching of a product, Fernando Coellar uses his esthetic sense to create worlds of fantasy, color, light and imagination that are full of creativity and original design.
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