José Antonio Hernández-Díez

JOSÉ ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ-DÍEZ (Caracas, 1964).
Untitled, ca.1990's.
Yellow methacrylate.
Unsigned.
Pieces from this series were part of the artist's solo exhibition held at the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, 2000).
Measurements: 138 x 115 x 54 cm.
Agigant dessert spoons are one of the everyday utensils that the Venezuelan artist José Antonio Hernández-Díez decontextualises and re-signifies in order to reflect on contemporary society. Like an archaeologist of everyday life, the artist recovers objects that allow him to compose metaphors about the idiosyncrasies of each place, inequalities and social injustices. In the sculptor's opinion, something as subtle as the shape and colour of a spoon in a given locality provides information about subtle aspects of the territory in question.
An artist of Venezuelan origin, José Antonio Hernández-Diez studied at the Centro de Formación Cinematográfica in Caracas. Hernández-Diez has had solo exhibitions in New York, Madrid, Sao Paulo and Caracas, and group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), La Caixa (Barcelona) and the Museo Alejandro Otero (Caracas), among others. He has also participated, among others, in the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1996, the Kwangiu International Biennale, Korea, in 1995 and the Aperto of the Venice Biennale, in 1993. At the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, under the curatorship of Dan Cameron (chief curator) and Gerardo Mosquera (associate curator). Hernández-Diez has been presented by the New Museum as "one of the most important artists to emerge in the last decade", and whose work, based on the use of unusual materials taken from urban and everyday life, "elevates street and domestic culture, while commenting on the political and economic realities of South American life". Using a wide variety of media and a youthful urban aesthetic, he constructs works of great sarcasm and social critique that often highlight authoritarianism, marginality and the paradoxes of globalisation.