Which Way Is Up? II Painting

I make contemporary figurative paintings that explore certain codes of behaviour inside the museum in a playful manner. When visiting exhibitions I become a voyeur looking for interesting scenes that catch my attention and taking photos of people without them noticing. I later use these photos as source material for my paintings, which make reference at how we’re looking and interacting with the world around us, touching themes such as the way we look at art through modern technology. The paintings also reflect spaces of quietness and stillness that hold a poetic element, inviting us to meditate and create our own narrative. I'm interested in the meta-referential aspect of the paintings and the parallelism created by the scene represented and the moment the viewer faces it, realizing they have become part of the work and that they’re probably being observed by an audience. ‘If we discover how we see paintings we shall also discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are learning’ John Berger. Elena García de la Fuente was born in Madrid (1975) and raised in Málaga. She has lived and worked in London since 1999. She studied Fine Art at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, before finishing her studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in 1997. She completed an MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute in London in 2001. In 2015, one of her paintings was selected for her first group museum show 'Beauty' at MAD Antequera, curated by Fernando Francés director of CAC Málaga. The same year her work has been shortlisted for the ‘Winsor & Newton Painting Prize’ and the ‘National Open Art Competition’. Most recently, in 2016, she has been shortlisted for the ‘Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize’ and was selected to exhibit at the ‘Royal Academy Summer Exhibition’. Elena’s works are in the private collection of Gavin Turk (UK), Jim Chanos (USA) and Font-Irwin Collection (UK), as well as in other private collections in Azerbaijan, Argentina, Georgia, Spain and Switzerland. She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions in London, Leeds, Berlin, Salzburg and Spain.