Francisco-Fernando Granados’ gestural practice interrogates the legacies of Modernist abstraction. who claims abstraction? study 1 and study 2 were developed as part of the artist’s preparations for his 2023 solo exhibition at Teck Gallery on SFU’s Vancouver’s Harbour Centre campus, a space familiar to the artist during his time as a newcomer and student in Vancouver. Incorporating daily drawing into his performance and media art background, Granados generated immersive digital print installations that both drew upon and critiqued Modernist visual strategies. Employing what he calls “minor abstraction,” Granados emphasizes ephemeral materials, site-specific approaches, and non-art contexts, to infuse geometric visual vocabularies with an open-ended politics.
Francisco-Fernando Granados, who claims abstraction? study 2, 2023, digital print on paper. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the Artist, 2023.
Title
who claims abstraction? studies
Artist
Francisco-Fernando Granados
Year
2023
Collection
SFU Art Collection
Year Acquired
2023
Artists
Francisco-Fernando Granados (he/him) was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples. Since 2005, his practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, using abstraction performatively, site-specifically, and relationally, to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition. His work has developed from the intersection of formal painterly training at Langara College, working in performance through artist-run spaces, studies in queer and feminist theory at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and early activism as a peer support worker with immigrant and refugee communities in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Surrey on unceded Coast Salish territories. This layering of experiences has trained his intuitions to seek site-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions.
Recent projects include foreward (2021-23), a solo exhibition consisting of site specific installations in dialogue with the permanent collection at The MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Vers (2022), an action-based collaboration with NY-based artist Jonathan VanDyke at MassArt in Boston, duet (2019) a traveling two-person exhibition alongside Canadian modernist painter Jack Bush in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Peterborough and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and 'co-respond-dance Version II,' an artist book published in collaboration with Centre des arts actuels Skol in Montreal. Other exhibition highlights include a performance installation in partnership with Third Space Gallery and the YMCA Newcomer Connections Centre in St. John New Brunswick, public art installations for Mercer Union and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, and participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics at the Hessel Museum and Ramapo College in the United States and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden.
His writing has been published in books including Other Places: Reflections on Media Arts in Canada, as well as exhibition catalogues, magazines, and art journals like Canadian Art, C Magazine, Canadian Theatre Review, FUSE, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Awards and honours include grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, and the Governor General’s Silver Medal for academic achievement upon graduating from Emily Carr University in 2010. He completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in 2012 and has taught art and theory in various capacities at OCAD University and University of Toronto Scarborough. In 2022, Granados began a PhD in Media & Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University.