Columbian artist goes abstract at National Gallery
Columbian artist goes abstract at National Gallery
JAKARTA (JP): Manuel Hernandez is quite possibly an unfamiliar
name to most Indonesian art lovers -- he is a contemporary art
maestro from a country as far away as Columbia in Latin America.
To find out more about his distinguished works, local art
buffs are now able to view some 35 of the artist's works, which
are currently on display at the National Gallery, starting from
Thursday (today) through May 4.
The exhibition, entitled Paper and Signs, characterizes a
production of signs and abstract elements. Hernandez experiments
with handmade and recycled paper instead of canvas.
His works represent the high values of modernity. In other
words, the artistic arguments based on aesthetic experience by
itself and on the artistic originality arising in visual art with
the beginning of the impressionism and its expansion into the
20th century.
Born in Bogota, Hernandez studied in the Esquela Nacional de
Bellas Artes de Bogota and in Santiago de Chile. His work has
appeared in various joint and innumerable individual exhibitions
and has received all the distinctions conferred on art in his
native Colombia.
He continued his studies at Rome's Fine Arts Academy and at
the Arts Students League in New York. His works have been
exhibited in many cultural centers around the world.
The artist's pieces belong to the world of pure abstraction.
They have a theme different from that of naturalism, and look
into the freedom of colors for complete expression.
His production emphasizes the importance of creative activity
and expresses the spirit of Colombian society, of its will to
experiment and take risks, of its fascination with
with color and of its desire for harmony and concord. It is
abstract work, but its forms bring characters to mind and enable
the observer to understand that creation is not merely a manner
of expression, but also a means of communication capable of
transmitting humanity's most cherished ideals.
The Ambassador of the Republic of Columbia Luis Fernando Angel
said that many Asian people have little knowledge of the
development of fine arts in Columbia.
The exhibition will enable the Indonesian public to know the
culture, and especially the development of fine arts, in
Columbia.
Colombian fine art development has deep roots in Spanish arts
in terms of trends, techniques and subject matters, as a result
of its colonial history.
But in the 20th century a group of progressive artists
introduced works representative of international trends and
several became world famous. Alejandro Obregon initiated the
modern movement, along with Fernando Botero, Eduardo Ramirez
Vilamizar and many others.
Manuel Hernandez is one such contemporary art master who
combines the random results of experimentation with a background
of concepts such as fate, flow, the infinite and indefinable,
which offer an idea of the magnitude of his achievement, as he
grasps notions that are not only abstract but also incalculable
and eternal.
The artist's first steps were in figure-work. His work today
is eminently abstract and works from geometrical figures such as
the oval and the ellipse, with which he has composed certain
signs as part of his personal alphabet. Even if his starting
point is relatively strict, the artist gives his forms a certain
spontaneity, with absolute freedom, enabling him to express
through color, execution, scale, location on canvas and relations
between them, realities which have no tangible form but are less
real for being intangible, such as suspension, tension, contact,
balance and equilibrium. The coloring of his work varies widely,
but has always been harmonious and muted -- the atmospheric
impression that the backgrounds produce is emphasized by the
edges of the signs.
In addition to Jakarta, the exhibition will also travel to
Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Hong Kong, Macau, Manila, Sydney and New
Delhi. (raw)