José Antonio Hernández-Díez

JOSÉ ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ-DÍEZ (Caracas, 1964).
Untitled, ca. 1990s.
Yellow acrylic.
Unsigned.
Works from this same series were included in the artist’s solo exhibition held at the Galician Center for Contemporary Art (CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, 2000).
Measurements: 138 x 115 x 54 cm.
The oversized dessert spoons are one of the everyday utensils that Venezuelan artist José Antonio Hernández-Díez decontextualizes and reinterprets to reflect on contemporary society. Like an archaeologist of everyday life, the artist recovers objects that allow him to construct metaphors about the idiosyncrasies of each place, as well as social inequalities and injustices. In the sculptor’s view, something as subtle as the shape and color of a spoon in a particular locality reveals subtle aspects of the territory in question.
A Venezuelan-born artist, José Antonio Hernández-Diez studied at the Caracas Film School. Hernández-Diez has held solo exhibitions in New York, Madrid, São 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 Alejandro Otero Museum (Caracas), among others. He has also participated in, among others, the 1996 São Paulo Biennial, the 1995 Gwangju International Biennale in Korea, and the Aperto section of the 1993 Venice Biennale. At the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, curated by Dan Cameron (chief curator) and Gerardo Mosquera (associate curator). Hernández-Diez has been described by the New Museum as “one of the most important artists to emerge in the last decade,” whose work—based on the use of unusual materials drawn from urban and everyday life—“elevates the street and domestic culture, while commenting on the political and economic reality of life in South America.” Through the use of a wide variety of media and a youthful urban aesthetic, he creates works marked by sharp sarcasm and social criticism that often highlight authoritarianism, marginalization, and the paradoxes of globalization.