Screen Printing Workshop at the Art House Nov. 15th
---by Tom O'Meara
The tranquillity of a large airy warehouse, where classical music plays softly in the background, and painters and trainees glide around pieces in progress, masks an intense force at work within. This is the studio of Sergio Hernandez, prolific artist and currently one of Oaxaca's most successful painters.
Virtually each year since 1980, he has produced or collaborated on an exhibition. He is in his studio at nine every morning and the earliest he leaves is eight at night. To relax, he runs in the morning, swims at his home in the evening and paints portraits outside of studio hours.
His appearance produces an illusory effect similar to his studio. What marks Hernandez out is his relaxed normality and lack of pretension. He possesses none of the affected quirks and marks of eccentricity we associate and expect from our artists. But when he opens his mouth the intensity is immediately apparent. Every conversation topic is related to his art.
He says he has always known, since he started painting as a child, that he would become an artist. It seemed like a natural progression. His parents, he explains, provided an artistic background, painting and working with wood.
He names Mexican painter Jose Guadeloupe Posada and German artists Enzo and Anfil Kafer as his major influences, but Oaxaca also provides him with a rich pool of inspiration. He cites the markets, attracted by the mythological backgrounds of the animals sold there. "I take them, paint them, transform them and place them in my art."
Like so many artists in Oaxaca he is inspired and influenced by the region's light, but also pays tribute to the colors of the Oaxacan earth and the Mixteca. Of Mixteca descent, Hernandez counts his ancestry as one of his major influences but doesn't think of himself as a specifically Mixteco artist or Mexican artist, simply, "a painter." This is not entirely true. Hernandez also works with ceramics and sculptures. In both mediums he is concerned with producing people and organic forms out of the shapes and textures of wood, plants and seeds.
His painting is a far more personal and biographical process. He draws on his own living experience and dreams, taking personal relationships between human beings, superimposing them on to animals and making mystical links.
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Though personal experience is central to his art he is cagey about his love life. He professes that, "I don't believe in boyfriends and girlfriends." Instead he says that he finds people in the course of his life, meets them in the evening to paint them and then, "whatever happens after that nobody knows."
The body of work he is most pleased with is El Circo, which was exhibited in 1998. He describes it as, "my best reflection of everything living and what it is to watch it as a spectator." A fascination with the circus as metaphor is rooted in a tragic aspect of Hernandez's own life. His grandfather, who he never met, perished in a vat of burning
oil while fooling around drunk on the tightrope of a circus that visited his Oaxacan village. As a child Hernandez never saw a circus; his family was too traumatized by the experience and it became a taboo subject. El Circo is, in some form, a reaction to this.
For the last five years he has been in therapy, analyzing concepts such as love and how human relationships work in different ways. He entered therapy, he says, not because he personally needed it, but "because I needed some answers about relationships because of my professional work." His therapy was abruptly paused, however, as his analyst died a few weeks ago.
Themes in his art have varied and developed, related to the countries where he has lived. Over the past two decades he has spent three months in Portugal, two years in Paris, two months in Florence and three months touring Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey.
Although Hernandez says he is religious, labeling himself as humanistic, it is not an explicit theme in his art. He describes both himself and his art as non-political. Hernandez believes that the primary responsibility of an artist is simply to "be creative" and though the artist possesses a responsibility to society, as does any human being, it does not extend beyond this.
Hernandez reckons: "In producing art, the artist is breaking a mental state and is not passive but active." He says that as he has gotten older his art has grown "more refined, more sober and more free."
"I'm working now on a series called Las Escaleras where you're going up and down in concentric circles and it's like a maze that finally reaches love." Hernandez is referring to a wider and more esoteric notion of love. He says he has been preoccupied for a long time with the visual image of trying to get to another metaphysical level and has found inspiration in Asian culture. Influenced by reading about the East and, in particular, India, he says that whereas with the west the "state of consciousness stops at a certain level," in the oriental tradition it progresses to another plain and beyond.
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Hernandez reckons: "In producing art, the artist is breaking a mental state and is not passive but active." He says that as he has gotten older his art has grown "more refined, more sober and more free."
"I'm working now on a series called Las Escaleras where you're going up and down in concentric circles and it's like a maze that finally reaches love." Hernandez is referring to a wider and more esoteric notion of love. He says he has been preoccupied for a long time with the visual image of trying to get to another metaphysical level and has found inspiration in Asian culture. Influenced by reading about the East and, in particular, India, he says that whereas with the west the "state of consciousness stops at a certain level," in the oriental tradition it progresses to another plain and beyond.
Hernandez's painting style has been criticized as too reminiscent of Oaxaca's most famous artist, Francisco Toledo, and his skeleton images classified as Toledo rip-offs. To these accusations he simply replies: "I don't care." If he likes an influence he says he uses it no matter where it originates, and counters that the skeletons are heavily inspired by Posada rather than Toledo. He adds that he is influenced by Toledo but more in terms of certain painting techniques and types of paint he uses than any thematic material.
To critics of Oaxaca's art scene, who believe that it has seen its golden age and has now grown too stale and derivative, he replies: "I don't believe that it has reached its highest point."
He admits that Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo signified something very important for Oaxacan art. But: "In reality I believe that the current situation has something to do with the galleries." He figures that the galleries in Oaxaca, by dictating what is displayed in Oaxaca on grounds of marketing and sales, have stifled development, and created the public perception of a specific, stagnant art scene.
As evidence of fresh ideas that do not receive requisite recognition he cites some young Oaxacan artists who are trying to do something different with installations. Hernandez is not the first to bemoan the lack of support Oaxaca's galleries provide to young artists.
However, he thinks the wider Mexican art world is in good health. His own future? He is planning to visit India for a month in September and then live in Madrid for two years. He'd also like to become more involved with cinema and use film as a medium. He has already made two short films, though they are yet to be edited. One is set in Chinatown in Havana, Cuba, and the other is about people in Marrakesh, Morocco, and what they hide.
And what does he believe he would have done if he hadn't become an artist? Hernandez pauses and laughs. "I don't know. Nothing good, I know that."
