Peter Jorge Fagundo

I was born the youngest of six kids in a crazy Puerto Rican/German/Norwegian household with four older sisters and an older brother. We moved every few years from Minnesota to Ohio to Colorado, where we lived in Boulder, Canon City, and Colorado Springs. We lived in the mountains, on farms, and in the suburbs. There were horses, dogs, cats, sheep, ducks, and geese, with the occasional cow, goat, and bunny. We were led through the 1980s as lapsed Catholic, new age, self-help, entrepreneur wonderers.

On our coffee table was a small blue worn book, 500 Centuries of Art. It was a very concise art history survey with works from the Cave Paintings of Lascaux to Pollack. I loved that book. I would look at it daily and make stickman reproductions in the wide yellowing margins. Something in those poor small images of the dragons and naked people, the battles and the blood, was more real to me than anything the adults around me were saying about life.

I have spent my life chasing and creating images with that same appeal for me, the same truth. My work takes me into all kinds of territory, as does teaching. I find endless inspiration, growth, and change from my front seat on the frontier of cultural movement at SAIC, where I’ve been teaching painting since 2008. There’s always something new to learn and assimilate. The work is never done.

2000 Trustee Merit Scholar, the Dept of Painting and Drawing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

2024 Michelle Grabner, “A Bloodline Through Histories: A Review of Peter and Jake Fagundo at M. LeBlanc,” Newcity Chicago, October 2024; Natalie Jenkins, “Adriq in RecombinaMon,” Chicago Reader, October 2024; Falkowski, Andrew “PainMng the EroMc Plunders of AbstracMon," 2019; "Review of Peter Fagundo at Shane Campbell Gallery,” Newcity Chicago, March 2019; Waxman, Lori. “Things To Be Next To 3 Walls,” Chicago Tribune, December 2010; Pearson, Laura. “Things To Be Next To at 3 Walls,” TimeOut Chicago; Golden -McNerny, Regan, Review: “Things to be Next to/ 3 Walls,” New City; Self, Dana “Things to Be Next To” turns ordinary into extraordinary,” Kansas City Star; Studio Chicago Blog, “The Studio is Where You Are”; Rosch, Brion Nuda, “The Things in our Lives (Home & Studio) Here and There (Inside and Out),” SFMOMA Open Space; Foumberg, Jason, Art Break: “Art House” NewCity; One Day Only Peter Fagundo, examiner.com, July 2009; Episode 155, Bad at Sports, April 2008; Frank, Peter, “8 ArMsts Acuna-Hansen,” artcurrents.org, Winter 2005; Majera, Joanne, “2005 Miami Report,” Joanne Majera Studio, December 2005; Artner, Alan, “Successful VariaMons on a Theme,” Chicago Tribune, March 2004

2024 Ours is the Hand that Sews Time, with Jake Fagundo, MLeBlanc Gallery, Chicago, IL; 2022 Lovely American Disaster, The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI; Baroque Response, Bianca Bova Gallery, Chicago, IL; 2020 Vitruvian Core, Hans Gallery, Chicago, IL; 2019 Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL; 2013 Devening Projects and EdiMons, Chicago, IL; The Bike Room, Chicago, IL; 2009 ETF, EssenMal TransmutaMon Frequency, Evanston, IL; 2008 Devening Projects and EdiMons, Chicago, IL.; 2004 boom, Oak Park, IL. Hudson Franklin, New York, NY; 2002 “The Stray Show” with The Suburban, Chicago, IL; 2001 Modest Contemporary Art Projects, Chicago, IL.

My work now does not have a single meaning or message. I work in large groups of varied languages and conversations. These days, with social media and our complicated situations, to be alive and walking around with a body, head, and heart, means we are inundated with calls to action, requests to care, to pay attention. I’d say the work is an assembly of responses to desires, confusions, and wonder. I make paintings and drawings that try to notice that thread between composition, context, and culture. The symbols and images are found in my recollections, usually from signifiers of subcultures that I’ve had experiences with. The thing is, those experiences were typically half-assed attempts to join, to connect, to locate parts of myself. So, I did kind of get into skate boarding, Punk Rock, self-help, yoga, new age culture. I thought, ok, this will fix me. But it was always incomplete. I could never totally buy in. I took pieces of these experiences with me and they became my understanding of the culture and time I found myself in. I love people. I love that we try so hard to be better, to be in control, to be cool. Maybe these images are my way of saying I see you. I see you trying. I’m trying too. Is that sad? LOL