GHISLAINE & LANDO FREMAUX-VALDEZ

Ghislaine Fremaux-Valdez (b. ’86, Washington, DC) and Lando Fremaux-Valdez (b. ’78, Levelland, TX) are a collaborative partnership based in Lubbock, Texas. They established their collaborative practice in 2020. Both are pastelists and each claims portraiture as the center of their artistic universe. Together, their work concerns the sensuality of grief, the medicalized subject, the experience of surgical intervention, and desire. They undertake the ideational development and technical execution of each piece collaboratively, often drawing shoulder-to-shoulder, or frequently alternating. The drawings follow from long conversations about their own relationship, the visual cultures of medicine and religion, and the responsibilities of figurative art.

Ghislaine (MFA Penn State, ’12) is Interim Director and Associate Professor of Art at the Texas Tech University School of Art. Lando Valdez is self-taught and maintains professional practices in portraiture and illustration. He teaches private lessons and community courses in drawing. Their drawings have been exhibited in shows juried and/or curated by Jessica T. Smith, Leslie Moody Castro, Juana Williams, Ksenya Gurshtein, Jim Morphesis, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and recently, Triton Mobley, in More is Never Enough at Field Projects (New York, NY). They presented their first solo show in 2023 at Arts Fort Worth (Fort Worth, TX), which was reviewed at length on Glasstire.com, the leading news source for contemporary art in Texas. They look forward to a second solo show in 2024, at the Museum of the Southwest (Midland, TX).