Through his sculptural and photographic work, Hernandez-Diez has developed a personal iconography centered on familiar, often domestic, objects. The ordinary is made extraordinary through Hernandez-Diez's provocative, darkly humorous use of material and scale.
Please join us for the opening reception on 16 November, 6-8pm, at 534 West
22nd Street, ground floor
Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by
Jose Antonio Hernandez-Diez from 16 November 2002 through 4 January 2003.
This is the Venezuelan artist's third solo exhibition at Sandra Gering
Gallery. It coincides with a major retrospective of Hernandez-Diez's work
co-curated by Dan Cameron, Senior Curator and Gerardo Mosquera, Adjunct
Curator -- New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. The retrospective is
on view at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art through November
17th, and will travel to SITE Santa Fe and the New Museum in 2003.
Through his sculptural and photographic work, Hernandez-Diez has developed
a personal iconography centered on familiar, often domestic, objects. The
ordinary is made extraordinary through Hernandez-Diez's provocative, darkly
humorous use of material and scale. Among a number of works by
Hernandez-Diez exhibited in the 2000 Carnegie International were a series
of gigantic, twisted, acrylic spoons - both Pop and Surrealistic in
nature. A previous sculptural installation at Sandra Gering Gallery
incorporated skateboards made of fried pork skin. As Lisa Phillips,
Director of the New Museum, says in her foreword to the retrospective
catalogue, these skateboards "form part of a complex vocabulary derived
from the artist's deep fascination with the ordinary as a mask for the
truly bizarre."
At Sandra Gering Gallery, Hernandez-Diez will exhibit a version of his Four
Flavors video sculpture. In Four Flavors, cardboard boxes form the body
and head of a giant, low-tech "worm". To represent the worm's feet,
Hernandez-Diez places a row of televisions under the cardboard, all playing
a video of the artist's tongue licking the floor. Futility is a recurrent
theme in Hernandez-Diez's work, echoed here by the uselessness of his
tongue's repetitive motion.
Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-6pm. For further information
please contact Marianna Baer at 646.336.7183
Sandra Gering Gallery
534 West 22nd Street, NY 10011
tel 646 3367183 fax 646 3367185