Have you ever imagined seeing a whale swim inside a bowl of cereal?
However childlike this fantasy may seem, Paul Fuentes has already turned it into a real image. A Mexican illustrator based in Amsterdam, his work focuses mostly on taking everyday objects, combining them with the unexpected, and doing a dreamlike mash-up of them.
Armed with sharp Photoshop skills and a keen eye for cloying pastel palettes, Fuentes creates surprising and offbeat images. He’s got an eye to discover the hidden properties of everyday objects, and focusing on them, he mixes them with an unsuspected element, often achieving wickedly fun results.
Probably, the reason why Fuentes’ work has the capacity of captivating us is because the subjects of his multi-layered photographs are things we’re in touch with every single day. However, he observes aspects about them that we usually don’t notice, combining them within a surprising context.
Wittily analyzing shapes, colors, and textures, he gives our day-to-day lives a twist by taking common objects into a new dimension and creating a pop-tasting surreal atmosphere. Out of these objects he uses for his creations, edible things are his most preferred models. Anything you can put in your mouth is a good subject for Fuentes’ designs. Yet, the images aren’t anything like your common food ads since he turns the ordinary into something that’s out of this world.
Would you ever dream of seeing a glass of star-wine? What about a tulipop? His tasty creations always manage to surprise. They all look just glamorously delicious.
There are other cases where his work doesn’t follow only the idea of creating a new type of food, but only emphasizes the possible association of elements that usually come from very different contexts. Anyone could place a fruit roll-up in a scotch tape cutter, right? When we look at mash-ups such as this one, there’s nothing we can do except giggle at the quirky image.
Fuentes’ designs, however, are not just fun and games. Through his acute sense of color and form, he finds a way to create images that can move society through brilliant associations that in any other context would appear unexpected. For instance, by taking a skin-colored balloon and placing a blond wig with the hairstyle of President Trump on top of it, he takes a hit at the politician whom he considers “the biggest airhead ever”.
Besides Fuentes’s appeal for food, animals are also some of his favorite subjects, and he experiments with their features to put them in the most bizarre situations. Where else would you watch a kitten taking a nap wrapped inside a sushi roll? Or could you ever see a blue whale blowing a balloon with the air of its spiracle? These associations are both witty and cute.
The artwork of Fuentes mingles somewhere between the esthetic of pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and the glossy food art of the celebrity animator Antoni Tudisco. The bright mashups he creates are savvy and tasteful illusions that please the raging foodies living inside all of us as well as the most playful part of our imagination.
Take a look at his Instagram account or his website. It will probably make your day.
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