José Emilio Fuentes Fonseca

I’m José Emilio Fuentes Fonseca, known as JEFF, a visual artist working between painting and welded metal sculpture [add where you’re from, where you’re based and your training, in one line]. What drives my work is memory: how it lives in our bodies, in the objects we hold on to, in the places we leave behind. That is why I return to simple, familiar things like a heart, an apple, a birthday cake, a vase of flowers, and try to make them feel fragile and alive. In steel, I weld and deform the metal until it looks soft, almost inflated, and I leave the seams visible, because I want you to see how each piece was made and what it has been through. I often add found objects, a worn tap or an old tray, so that the work carries a little of someone else’s past. In my paintings I let color and gesture take over, with bold, flat fields and a direct hand that keeps things intimate and a little playful. I want my work to make you pause in front of something ordinary and feel what it holds: affection, time, loss, celebration. If a piece stays with you after you leave, it has done what I hoped.