Exhibition

José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I will fear no evil

in progress

José Antonio Hernández-Díez. "La Hermandad", 1994. Video installation. ”la Caixa”

José Antonio Hernández-Díez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1964) emerged in the international arena at a time when the idea of contemporary art as a global language was being proposed, and the dominance of artists from Europe and the United States was being questioned. He has participated in a number of important exhibitions including Aperto ’93: Emergency/Emergenzia at the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), Beyond Borders, the 1st Gwangju Biennale (1995) and Cocido y crudo (The Cooked and the Raw) at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1994. His exhibitions have spanned photography, sculpture, video and drawing; metaphysics besides adolescent humour; high-end production as well as ‘poor’ and unconventional materials.

I will fear no evil presents works from the late eighties and early nineties, some of which have not been seen since they were first exhibited, together with a new project developed specifically for the occasion. This exhibition includes Hernández-Díez’s first experimental videos, along with other early works using screens and vitrines. These include, for example, three pieces that appeared in his landmark first monographic exhibition, San Guinefort y otras devociones (San Guinefort and other devotions), held at the Sala RG in Caracas, July–August 1991. This exhibition heralded what the artist termed as a ‘new Christian iconography’, offering – as artist-colleague Meyer Vaisman described – ‘a techno-pop view of Catholicism’s most beloved symbols’.

The proposition that, in Latin America, the rationalist and scientific force of the Enlightenment did not rupture the progress of the Baroque towards modernity is both given credence and subject to a perpetual referendum in Hernández-Díez’s work. Over the last three decades his syncretic art has grappled with superstition, morality and religion, whilst displaying a fascination with ethics and technology. He has addressed social inequality, violence and unrest as well as cosmetics and consumer goods, and referenced objects from the domestic sphere alongside the public culture of the street or sports field. Hernández-Díez presents an artistic confirmation of the dictum that discontinuity is more likely than continuity. Instead of an intrinsic orthodoxy governing his art, we discover a restless sequence of visual and iconographic inventions, where each work is engineered to articulate specific cultural, personal and historical circumstances. His works negotiate with the making of art as a practice burdened by opacity, veneration and mortality, as much as by its stake in a living and continually reanimated culture.

		
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dates

18 March 2016 – 26 June 2016

documentation

Exhibition’s plan

title

José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I will fear no evil

dates

18 March 2016 – 26 June 2016

title

José Antonio Hernández-Díez. I will fear no evil

documentation

Exhibition’s plan

artist

José Antonio Hernández-Díez

Caracas

1964

see detail

José Antonio Hernández-Díez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1964, and lives and works between that city and Barcelona. He studied at the Centro de Formación Cinematográfica, in Caracas, and belongs to a generation of Venezuelan artists that came to prominence in the 1980s. Hernández-Díez emerged in the international arena at a time when the idea of contemporary art as a global language was being proposed, and the dominance of artists from Europe and the United States was being questioned. Using a wide variety of media and a young urban aesthetics he creates works full of sarcasm and social critique that question the authoritarianism, marginality and paradoxes of globalisation. One of his main focuses of interest is the relationship between the religious and the profane. Hernández-Díez’s installations and videos incorporate everyday objects from mass culture, sport and consumerism, as well as scientific material and organic elements such as animals and their organs.

He has participated in a number of important exhibitions including Aperto’93: Emergency/Emergenzia at the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), Cocido y crudo (The Cooked and the Raw) at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1994), and Beyond Borders, the 1st Gwangju Biennale (1995). He has held solo exhibitions at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela (2000), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2003), MACBA, Barcelona (2016) and various galleries in Europe and America.