Diogo Machado, also known as Add Fuel, is a Portuguese illustrator, visual artist and street artist born in 1980.
After graduating in graphic design at the Iade in Lisbon - Institute of Visual Arts, Design and Marketing, he worked for a few years in design studios in Portugal, then spent eight months in Munich, Germany. Since 2007, he has devoted himself exclusively to his artistic work.
Under the full name Add Fuel to the Fire, he first created a dark but exuberant visual universe, populated by a multitude of sticky, eccentric and joyous creatures, influenced by areas such as video games, comics, animation, science fiction, creative toys and urban culture. In 2008, fascinated by the aesthetic possibilities of symmetrical patterns and paving, he shortened his nickname to become Add Fuel and began to focus on the work and reinterpretation of the design language of traditional tiles, especially those of Portuguese azulejo in ceramic enamelled tin.
By harmoniously mixing these two seemingly irreconcilable visual languages, his current work aims to combine traditional decorative elements with contemporary visual references, thus creating new forms that reveal impressive complexity and meticulous mastery of detail. Although his work may at first glance seem to be a pastiche of classical formalism with small and medium-sized tile panels, large-scale stencils, hand-made murals and printed editions, a more in-depth observation reveals a chaotic world of original motifs and characters overflowing with deep emotions.
Through symmetrical repetitions, accumulations of layers and visual illusion techniques such as the trompe-l'oeil, his multilayer compositions create a poetic rhythm that plays with the viewer's perception and offers multiple possibilities of interpretation. He explores a wide range of techniques, both manual and digital, in the fields of drawing, painting, ceramics and printing, allowing him to establish a sophisticated dialogue between the past and the present, between heritage and modernity.
In addition to the many street works he has created in different countries, he has also exhibited his work at individual and collective exhibitions in well-known galleries and museums. Diogo Machado lives and works in Cascais, Portugal.
You will find at the gallery a wide selection of works by the artist ADD FUEL, in particular screenprints or lithographs signed in pencil, numbered and certified, but also hand-enhanced works.
