artnexus #51

The work of José Antonio Hernández-Díez (Venezuela, 1964) is characterized by a profound critical sense that can be directed at religion, technology, the social situation, or the artistic act itself. In that pursuit, the artist has made use of diverse media, which attest to his versatility in the manipulation of materials.

From his initial videos of the late 1980s to his most recent photographs Hernández-Díez confronts us with the tension between politics and the artistic act. His works do not constitute political art in the traditional sense of the term; rather, he investigates and renders complex the paradoxical everyday situations in which we are immersed. Hernández-Díez’s own context and experiences allow him to build a language that goes beyond the local.

The piece on our cover belongs to a series of photographs of brand-name sports shoes piled up into a vertical column, so that the acronyms that identify their brands are arranged into names alluding to important European thinkers such as Hume, Jung, Kant, and Marx. In this way the artist seeks to reveal how contemporary culture forces us to constantly re-elaborate codes whose content we only seem to know well.

IVONNE PINI