JOSÉ ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ-DIEZ
16 NOVEMBER - 4 JANUARY 2003
Almost Worm II, 2002
Cardboard, televisions, dvd, dvd player
21 x 222 x 16 inches
Almost Worm II, 2002
Cardboard, televisions, dvd, dvd player
21 x 222 x 16 inches
Almost Worm II video detail
Joan Petit II (The Artist Devouring his Son in a Pizza Style), 2002
Television, dvd, dvd player, cardboard, wood
72 x 15 x 17 inches
Joan Petit II (The Artist Devouring his Son in a Pizza Style), 2002
Television, dvd, dvd player, cardboard, wood
72 x 15 x 17 inches
Joan Petit II (The Artist Devouring his Son in a Pizza Style), 2002
Television, dvd, dvd player, cardboard, wood
72 x 15 x 17 inches
Romana and Napolitan, 2002
Cardboard, oil
Diptych; 77 x 40 x 32 inches each
Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by José
Antonio Hernández-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 Hernández-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, Hernández-Diez has developed a personal
iconography centered on familiar, often domestic, objects. The ordinary is made extraordinary
through Hernández-Diez's provocative, darkly humorous use of material and scale.
Among a number of works by Hernández-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, Hernández-Diez will exhibit a version of his Almost Worm
video sculpture. In Almost Worm, cardboard boxes form the body and head of a giant,
low-tech "worm". To represent the worm's feet, Hernández-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 Hernández-Diez's work, echoed here by the
uselessness of his tongue's repetitive motion.
