A Deep Conversation With Heyd Fontenot

Multimedia artist, Heyd Fontenot, is attracted to subjects possessed of discomforting or undefinable qualities. His drawn and painted portraits of unclothed subjects reveal the nuances of idiosyncratic expression and the delicacies of our humanness.  

Fontenot’s film and video work tends to narcotize and disorient. The artist renounces commonplace narrative conventions in an effort to destabilize, making way for individual epiphany and revelation.

Borrowing themes and images from fraternal secret societies, rodeos, brothels, places of worship and interior design showrooms, Fontenot works with a rotating cast of actors and models to fabricate ceremonial dramas and consumer indoctrinations.  

The artist slyly undermines all that is good and holy about middle-class respectability to reveal mythical America as both oppressive and alluring. His on-going video project Flaming Critters follows the adventures of a fictitious social club who dabble in Luciferianism.

Fontenot’s mid-career survey exhibition “The Very Queer Portraits of Heyd Fontenot,” traveled to the University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland), Rollins College (Winter Park, Florida), and Allegheny College (Meadville, Pennsylvania).  He is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas.