“Tavolo” - A Quarterly Art Dinner Series - Inaugural Fete Featuring Artist Tony Vazquez

Welcome to our ONLINE STORE and blog.

Each Monday and Friday we invite you to a peak behind the scenes of the people, places and things that inspire us. This week our highlighted featured guest is artist Tony Vazquez. 

In light of this week's passing election we chose to take you on a journey from the past to present reflecting on how at times the best way to steady the metaphorical "horse" is to concentrate on an artist expression of people who have been doing the same thing over a length of time. From the 100 year old French artist  Pierre Soulages who recently was honoured with a solo exhibition at the Louvre to celebrated Venezuelan artist Tony Vazquez.

Its fascinating to see how new guard have somehow picked up on the same energy in the zeitgeist and have a completely different base of inspiration yet both use the same colour "black" to express themselves in a study on the power and possibilities of black.

The Impossible Task of Erasing Violence

Tony Vazquez-Figueroa has explored the substance of crude oil and its many manifestations with the intention of using his artistic skills and vision to try and understand what happened to one of the richest countries that forced him and thousands of others to forsake their homeland and flee their homeland.  

In Memorium: Artist Tony Vazque's Everyday Objects Sealed in Acrylic Cubes Doused in Crude Oil

Venezuela is a land dependent on its oil fields.  It is one of the largest exporters of oil and has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Oil has determined its history, its economy, its social and political existence for hundreds of years, long before 20th century oil rigs began to mark the landscape.

Tony Vazquez-Figueroa
Black Archive / Concorde Maiquetía, 2018
resin on archival print, edition of 3 + 2 AP
15 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches

Using crude oil as a key material in the creation of works that include drawings, photography, oil-ink blots, three-dimensional objects and prints made from his specially created oil ink, he has produced a personal archive of the products that form his country’s and his own collective memory and patrimony… an inventory of his own contrived archive, both real and imagined, available and no longer existent and all dependent on oil and made of oil or its products.

Tony Vazquez-Figueroa
Black Mirror Painting / B, 2018
acrylic, resin and rubber on canvas
50 x 42 inches

Both myself and Thomas, the creators of Thomas Fuchs Creative homeware, decided the best way to meet the artist community when we moved to Miami, Fl, was to host quarterly dinner parties. 

Thomas Fuchs Tavolo Dinner Invite 

We partnered with renowned gallery owners, Sergio and Luisa Cernuda, of LnS Gallery, who specialize in Miami talent to showcase dinners with local and internationally renowned artists. 

We invited guests into our home removing our art and installing a featured artist's work, while enjoying a gourmet meal inspired by the artwork's theme. 

Thomas Fuchs Home Accessories match the featured artist Tony Vazquez's work pairing hand blown Murano Glasses in black and white atop a carpet of live moss

Using our Thomas Fuchs Creative tableware, personal sculptures, food, wine and the artist's work, I always hope to create unforgettable evenings for our guests.

At our first dinner, featuring Tony Vazquez-Figueroa, who uses crude oil to demonstrate Venezuelan's number one natural resource, which ironically funnels wealth out of the country, I wanted to creative something alive that juxtaposes with the stagnant black crude oil.

I covered the 12-foot-table in live moss, and set the stage with Thomas Fuchs Creative black and wine hand-blown Murano drinking glasses. The natural world was brought indoors in for an enchanted backdrop for the artwork. 

The menu for the evening was also inspire by Tony Vazquez-Figueroa’s series Black Surface: The Undoing Process inspired by crude oil

The three course dinner was again based by the landscape of the country of Venezuela and the theme of black crude oil in Tony's artwork.

In keeping with the theme of the black crude oil Thomas bases his menu on the art. For an appetizer, there was black truffle and wild mushroom pizza. The main course was a black squid ink risotto, and dessert was blackened chocolate ganache.

The wine pairings were Caymus Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon 2014. After dinner, guests were treated to a short presentation (see video below)  by the artist, who explained the relevance of using crude oil in his work.