I never got to meet my grandfather José, but there’s an anecdote about him that perfectly defines who we Fuentes Fuertes are. He got his driver’s license at fifty, and his first car was a 600 that got stolen barely a week after he bought it. When he managed to save up for another one, he chose a cadmium yellow Seat 133 and decided to replace the bumpers with wooden ones. He was a carpenter. I sometimes picture him driving that new car, proud, crossing the city with the bumpers he made himself. That image always makes me laugh. Without knowing it, he’s the origin of many of the gestures we still repeat in our family: this way of believing that everything can be improved if we touch it with our hands, if we transform it just a little. That’s who we are. We like to intervene, to alter and bring new meaning to the everyday—always through art. 

In this body of work, and in keeping with family tradition, I wanted to offer my own take on the classical oil portrait and pay tribute to everything that happens when one drives or is being driven. To those intimate sensations of moving toward a place where something is about to unfold. I imagined the car as a small stage, where light and shadow fall in suggestive ways, ready to be painted with precision. I also thought about the curvilinear geometries of vehicles, which here I isolate, crop, and lift out of context to discover new possibilities within them.

The Drivers is an exhibition of forms, colors, textures, and nostalgia—the kind of color that cars, and our streets, have gradually lost over the years. These works gather memories and stories lived inside a vehicle. They also contain journeys, love stories, dreams, friends, and strangers portrayed alongside the cars of their lives. When I said goodbye to my black 2004 Micra, I cried my eyes out. With it, I let go of my twenties, thousands of kilometers, and a version of myself that won’t return. It was a faithful companion for fifteen years. When I see one like it on the street, I can’t help but smile at it the same way I smile at dogs. —Carla Fuentes