FOD fueradentro

Description

FOD
fueradentro

FOD is an artist who employs painting, sculpture, drawing and installation art to examine the aesthetic principles of Constructivism, Cubism, the Bauhaus and the rich heritage of the modern tradition associated with both geometry and abstract art.

Using the relationships between form, materials and colour as a starting point, he alludes to spatial and architectural references while refraining from fleshing out specific scenarios. FOD’s work erects and dismantles structures in keeping with the metropolitan experience and its disjointed contemporary imaginary, creating complex figures which are there, but not there, before our eyes: façades, buildings, landscapes, scaffolds, dividing walls, streets, planes, etc. In this effort to recognise, the function of memory—with its capacity for both reconstructing what is no longer present and distorting it during this recreation—plays a fundamental role.

In terms of layout, every piece in the exhibition has been positioned with regard to the elements around it to bring about an exchange with the key elements of perspective, height, views through the railings, diagonal visual effects and the succession of truncated planes produced across the space. The result is a phenomenal and expansive Neo-Baroque effect in which the boundaries of material reality and aesthetic contrivance tend to blur, and each discipline spills over into the next: drawing into painting, painting into mural, mural into relief, relief into sculpture, sculpture into installation art, installation art into architecture, architecture into the city, and so on.

fueradentro invites the observer to enter and then abandon the expressly visual in order to consider the architectural, appreciating both of them in unison on a two-way journey achieved through interpretation of the pieces in parallel with the tectonics, decoration, iron work, stone, chrome materials and glass of Cibeles Palace.

FOD (Puerto Lumbreras, Murcia, 1973). After graduating in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, he moved to Madrid, and from there to Paris and Rome, where he recently received a scholarship from the Royal Spanish Academy. He is a founding member of Nave Oporto in Madrid, where he maintains his studio. He is currently represented by the T20 Gallery in Murcia and Madrid, and by the Juan Silió Gallery in Santander and Madrid.

After holding his first exhibitions at the T20 and Ad Hoc galleries in Spain, and at the Ybakatu Gallery in Brazil, he undertook ambitious projects at several institutions, including La Conservera, the Verónicas Gallery, and Tabacalera. He also participated in the Solo Project at the Next Art Fair Chicago, with the T20 Gallery. His work has featured in numerous collective exhibitions at La Casa Encendida and Scan Project, as well as in galleries other than those of his agents. Since the turn of the century, FOD has maintained a constant presence at art fairs and biennales such as ARCO, Manifesta, Artissima, Maco, SP Arte, Volta NY and Volta Basel.

Through his work, FOD reminds us that the need to create is inextricably linked to the cultural development of humanity. “There has never been a period in human history where humankind has not felt the need for a shelter, a cabin, or somewhere to settle”. Based on this premise, he has created several public art installations, including: Inverted Nave, presented at Tabacalera in Madrid as part of the exhibition Attempts to Exhaust a Space; Construction Zone-Luxury Slums, in Cartagena; Shelter for a Passer-by, at the Cerezales Foundation in León; and the work displayed beside Murcia Cathedral, Nomad Structure.

The exhibition curator is Oscar Alonso Molina (Madrid, 1971). Oscar Alonso Molina holds a PhD in Fine Arts and is an art critic, independent exhibition curator, essayist, jury member, and frequent lecturer. His work focuses on contemporary artistic manifestations, paying special attention to various aspects of visual rhetoric and the development of textual and narrative strategies.

A former director of the Connections programme at the ABC Museum in Madrid (2011-19), a biannual series of exhibitions revolving around drawing, a discipline he explores in all its contemporary manifestations as a tool for thought and conceptual analysis. He was also Director of Solo Projects at the Lisbon (2009), Santander (2010) and Swab (2014) art fairs.

The long list of exhibitions he has curated notably includes: Cubs of Dust (Crías de polvo) (Madrid, 1997); Santiago Serrano: the Sixties (Madrid, 2003); Carlos Alcolea (Castellón, 2004); Herminio Molero: Between Two Worlds (Teruel, 2004); The Great Art Lie (Almagro, 2004); Artifice (Seville and Cadiz, 2006; Córdoba, 2007; Madrid, 2008); Lita Mora: A Retrospective (Cadiz, 2006); Leave to Return (Madrid, 2007); Initial (Seville, 2008); Emblem: Art, Life and Symbol (Madrid, 2009); Contrast Lighting (Madrid, 2010); Hic Me (Aranjuez, 2011); Souvenir of Live (Seville, 2013); Outline the Idea (Huelva, 2015); Jaume Plensa: Matrix and Multiple (Madrid, 2015); Mitsuo Miura: Imagined Memories (Madrid, 2017); Victoria Civera: Elusive (Madrid 2018); Juan Carlos Bracho: Tutti Frutti (Alcobendas, 2019); Jorge Martins: Shadows and Paradoxes (Badajoz and Vigo, 2019); Juan Carlos Bracho: Florence/Venice (Gijón, 2019); Guillermo Pérez Villalta: Art as a Labyrinth (Madrid, 2021); The Earth Speaks, The Skies Listen (Valladolid, 2021); Worked Leather (Oviedo, 2021); In the Wink of an Eye (Oviedo, 2022); In Praise of Drawing (Jaén, Úbeda and La Carolina, 2024; Cadiz, 2025); Sara Quintero: On the Edges (Madrid, 2025); and Sculpture: Art of Genius (Granada, 2025).

Interested as he is in the textual legacy of contemporary artists, in recent years he has edited Notebooks (1964-2020), by Portuguese artist Jorge Martins; the Anthology of Texts (1976-2021) by Guillermo Pérez Villalta; and the Writings of Carlos Alcolea. He is currently putting the final touches to an anthology of unpublished texts by Daniel Verbis.