Erick Alejandro Hernandez

Miami, FL

September 1- 30, 2020

ARTIST STATEMENT

Revolving around overarching narratives such as a car crash or the death of a loved one, my paintings are orchestrations of memories that have been fractured or reimagined in processes surrounding lived trauma. Rooted in traditional image making, my practice intends to disrupt classical vignettes within the genre of painting by inserting personages and spaces that are in flux. I populate my images with figures and amalgamations of figures from my own experience in order to explore various simultaneous histories of loss and displacement. In collecting from my own life and those around me I am able to emulate the labor of locating these bodies in a realm of physical and allegorical exile from representations of culture and home. As such, I am able to explore my own place amongst them.

The figures in my paintings exist in a state of bodily transit that parallels my own experiences with immigration at a young age. In the work, the body functions as a vehicle to express psychological states and complex relationships with its surroundings. In depicting figures and their navigation of spaces where footing is unstable and susceptible to sudden catastrophe, I work to describe nuanced indexes of their personal histories in the form of gestures and expressions. This process of quilting images of people, many of whom are deceased or absent, into atemporal constructions is ultimately a search for reconcile with the pictured event. The result has been an ongoing investigation into the effects and manifestations of these shared experiences through image making and allegory.

BIO

Erick Alejandro Hernández is an artist from Cuba currently living and working in Miami, FL. He received his BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design (2017) and has been awarded fellowships at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017), Oxbow School of Art (2018), The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2018-19'), Yaddo (2020), and Macdowell (2020). In addition, he has received a Scholastics Awards Alumni Micro-grant (2019) and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2019). 

ARTIST LINKS

Website: http://www.erickalejandrohernandez.com

Instagram: @erickhe