FIRE ISLAND

FIRE ISLAND Gildo Medina Acrylic and colored pencil on paper, framed 8.6 x 8.6 inches 2024 About the works: "Men's Coded Poetry" is Gildo Medina's first series of homoerotic works — a 15-drawing grid that mirrors the visual structure of a dating app screen. Set against New York City's landscape of power, beauty, and seduction, the series reimagines the aristocratic portrait tradition as a space to explore contemporary masculinity. Where 17th-century portraiture encoded identity through heraldic symbols and noble titles, Medina substitutes the raw lexicon of modern desire: "BigFatNow," "MuscMusk," "UncutThick," "Hung," "XL Top," "Daddy." These fragmented, punctuation-free texts — inverted to be read most easily in a mirror — underscore the performative nature of identity in the digital age, shaped by vanity and the pursuit of social validation. Rendered using classical drawing and painting techniques honed over three decades of study in Italy and Mexico, the works hold tradition and transience in deliberate tension: the timeless against the ephemeral, the carnal against the sublime, the erotic against the grotesque. About Gildo Medina Born in Mexico, Gildo Medina is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. In 2020, he was featured in Taschen’s 100 best illustrators for the 4th consecutive time, being the only Mexican artist to hold this title. Gildo works between France, Italy, Spain, and Mexico, and his artwork has been exhibited in major cities across the globe - in prestigious art fairs, museums and galleries, embassies, foundations and other cultural institutions. Since he began his career at the age of 13, he has built up an extensive academic and professional background and has been given more than 30 awards. Gildo has collaborated with luxury brands, and his work rides a fine line between art and design. Clients include Chanel, Coca Cola France, Elle magazine, Ferragamo, Harper’s Bazaar Latin America, L’Oréal Paris, Louis Vuitton, and Sony Music Paris among others.