Gustavo Costa Fernandes

Born in Porto, Portugal, in 1983. Having graduated from Central Saint Martins (London) in 2008, I have maintained an art practice since, focusing on painting and printmaking (mainly
mono-prints). In parallel I have collaborated with the Tate and Whitechapel Gallery on book editions and exhibitions of the work of such artists as Malevich, Mark Dion, or Giacometti. I have exhibited at the Bankside, Menier and Coningsby galleries
in London.

Statement

My current practice focuses on painting and printmaking. I often take figurative subjects to intuitive places of expression, with as much of an intuitive and emotional charge as each specific scene can take. I often try to turn banal situations into more ambiguous, universal and symbolic condition. Off the monoprint work, my painting practice enables me to approach the same subjects, through a different set of responsive parameters and a longer period of intervention.

For this I employ figures and portraits and focus on transferring their uniqueness into an almost universal representational code. The banal, the corny, the fringed, the scared, and the totally opposite. Its all made of contradictions, since the underground is always targeted by the mainstream.