"Randy" by Camilo Carreno Gonzalez
Graphite on Paper
8 x 5 in (unframed) 10 x 8 (framed)
I’m a Colombian-born artist living and working in Chicago since 2015. My work draws from personal memory, emotional states, and the soft-spoken weight of being an immigrant navigating the liminal space where identity and daily life blur and you become a ghost that is trapped in between worlds, where you feel that you belong and don't belong at the same time. I approach my work as a way to hold contradictions: tenderness and anxiety, stillness and fragmentation. I’m interested in what happens when something feels both familiar and unsettling, like a figure that’s almost disappearing, or a space that looks safe but isn’t. Working small lets me lean into that intimacy and ambiguity. These drawings invite a closer look, not to explain, but to offer a moment of quiet attention. Many of my pieces carry autobiographical traces, but I try not to spell things out. Instead, I leave room for distortion, erosion, and time to show up in the work. What’s left unsaid, what disappears, is often just as important as what remains.
Graphite on Paper
8 x 5 in (unframed) 10 x 8 (framed)
I’m a Colombian-born artist living and working in Chicago since 2015. My work draws from personal memory, emotional states, and the soft-spoken weight of being an immigrant navigating the liminal space where identity and daily life blur and you become a ghost that is trapped in between worlds, where you feel that you belong and don't belong at the same time. I approach my work as a way to hold contradictions: tenderness and anxiety, stillness and fragmentation. I’m interested in what happens when something feels both familiar and unsettling, like a figure that’s almost disappearing, or a space that looks safe but isn’t. Working small lets me lean into that intimacy and ambiguity. These drawings invite a closer look, not to explain, but to offer a moment of quiet attention. Many of my pieces carry autobiographical traces, but I try not to spell things out. Instead, I leave room for distortion, erosion, and time to show up in the work. What’s left unsaid, what disappears, is often just as important as what remains.
Graphite on Paper
8 x 5 in (unframed) 10 x 8 (framed)
I’m a Colombian-born artist living and working in Chicago since 2015. My work draws from personal memory, emotional states, and the soft-spoken weight of being an immigrant navigating the liminal space where identity and daily life blur and you become a ghost that is trapped in between worlds, where you feel that you belong and don't belong at the same time. I approach my work as a way to hold contradictions: tenderness and anxiety, stillness and fragmentation. I’m interested in what happens when something feels both familiar and unsettling, like a figure that’s almost disappearing, or a space that looks safe but isn’t. Working small lets me lean into that intimacy and ambiguity. These drawings invite a closer look, not to explain, but to offer a moment of quiet attention. Many of my pieces carry autobiographical traces, but I try not to spell things out. Instead, I leave room for distortion, erosion, and time to show up in the work. What’s left unsaid, what disappears, is often just as important as what remains.