Alejandra Hernández: Keep My Treasures Where I Can See Them

Laveronica Arte Contemporanea presents “Keep My Treasures Where I Can See Them”, Alejandra Hernández’s solo exhibition curated by Giovanni De Lazzari.

Alejandra Hernández was born in Bogota in 1989. So far, she has developed her research through the exclusive use of drawing and painting. She examines subjects that, in a diversified way and with introspective depth, can express the varied conditions of a visionary sentiment, the outcome of the encounter between diverse cultural suggestions and an original imagination. Thus, this interprets the suggestions of modernity with unique expressive coherence, while also including aspects drawn from Hernández’s great fascination with aesthetic elements that evoke those of certain primitive magical cultures.

The artist explores intimate imagery distinguished by presences that constantly crop up in her paintings. For example, the female figure is predominant: the leading player in paradoxical and playful conditions, she is part of visions that are often surreal, in which the order of a seemingly happy everyday life is always troubled. The individual is at the centre of events reminiscent of group rituals, where playful actions help maintain precarious balances between people and things, in order to fill the void that forms the free zones between the boundaries of bodies.

By constantly overturning the relationships of power between humans and nature, animals (who occupy a very significant place in Hernández’s research) express symbolic aspects that cannot be traced to a specific meaning, but to a broader evocative environment. Sometimes their presence evokes that of tutelary gods; in other cases, they instead seem to come from the fantasies and thoughts of the people near them, like troubling forays into an altered everyday life. Even the objects present in the works convey a human vitality, giving an alienating air to scenes united by the joint presence of learned references and elements taken from mass culture, constantly redeveloped with great attention to detail and the choice of brilliant harmonies of colours – often complementary – that immediately reveal the artist’s interest in the profound aspects that condition social experiences, as well as her intent to push them past the limit of normality.

The works presented at the “Keep My Treasures Where I Can See Them” exhibition can be understood as different parts of a single, lucid vision that starts from an ironic and poetic subjective viewpoint to reflect on the different problems of communication and the conditionings it imposes on the individual’s perception, due to the increasingly confused and pervasive concurrence of its signs. Indeed, it seems that now we need to turn to these distorted images in order to talk about subjectivity, culture and image.