Bel Fullana.
Tractor Buddy

The work of visual artist Bel Fullana (Mallorca, 1985) has been read and interpreted from different points of view and perspectives, yet most of them coincide in highlighting an ironic interpretation of a feminine visual world inspired by trashy, working class aesthetics. The fact that these aesthetics and attitudes are currently idolised by brands, artists and cultural products is something that the artist loves and detests in equal measure. It is this ambivalent position that gives birth to the protagonists of her paintings: characters with green, purple or blue skin, with tattoos of dolphins, barbed wire, skulls and broken hearts, laden with chains and accessories, metallic grunge jewellery, dressed in white fishnet stockings, wearing uncovered lingerie and biker boots, in the purest Tomasa del Real style.

Bel Fullana’s universe exudes an alien femininity in which the darkness of techno and raves lost deep in the woods of the 1990s come together with the lifestyles of the periphery and the urban outskirts, now totally engulfed by musical movements linked to drugs, violence, sex, friendship and love, such as trap and reggaeton. The artist’s work, in turn, is inscribed in a visual genealogy that oscillates between mainstream culture and the margins of the underground. In her visual world we can sense how certain references to characters from comics, series and films from the 1990s, including Barb Wire, Biker Mice From Mars, Showgirls and Mad Max, engage with the voices and visuals of the current art and music scene, such as Hofmannita, Grimes, La Zowi, Zheani and María Forqué aka Virgen María.

On this occasion, the artist takes the characters in her paintings to the third dimension. “Tractor Buddy” marks her first sculptural manifestation: an exhibition in which the artist tries to observe how irony, humour, pastiche, artifice, theatricality and exaggeration are expressed in fashion. An alien, motorised fantasy that inhabits the zone called Monster Girl Fan, as a feminine figuration between the infantile and the adult, the masculine and the feminine, the non-human and the human, the known and the unknown, the impotent and the powerful, the spontaneous and the deliberate. Its sexualised aesthetic, as well as the subordination of its forms to the consumer object, are the prevailing understanding of what is referred to here as a cute-terrorist style: a sinister deformation of the aesthetics of helplessness, or an affective response to weakness, revolving around the desire for an increasingly intimate and sensual relationship with objects in which an unfamiliar but not necessarily threatening presence can be perceived.

Bel Fullana (Mallorca, 1985) is known for her paintings of imaginary female characters with strong, uncompromising attitudes. Her work combines oil and spray paint in bright colours and childlike finishes. With a degree in Fine Arts specialised in painting from the University of Barcelona, she has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York, Mexico, Brazil, Santiago, Sydney, Seoul, Taiwan, Rotterdam, Athens, Denmark, Portugal and Spain.

Her solo exhibitions include “PutiPandi” (Freight+Volume, New York, 2022), “Miau Planet” (Fran Reus Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, 2021) and “Foxy Gangstas” (Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, 2020). Collective exhibitions include “XOXO” (Delimbo Gallery, Seville, 2024), “Disco Nap” (Eligere Gallery, Seoul, 2022), “BADASS” (Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, 2021) and “No Body Like This Body” (Marquee Projects, New York, 2021). She has participated in art fairs such as Kiaf Seoul, Arco Madrid, Untitled Miami, Zona Maco Mexico, Art Rotterdam, Sunday London and Ch.ACO Chile, as well as Enter Art Fair, Art Herning and Art Copenhagen in Denmark. She currently lives and works in Mallorca, represented by Fran Reus Gallery (Mallorca) and Freight+Volume (New York).