Secundino Hernández's diverse and energetic painting practice resists easy characterisation. His work features intricately structured compositions that mix strong linear elements and rich bursts of colour. Some canvases feature abstracted, atomised forms, while others have more densely overlaid imagery in which it is possible to discern figurative elements.
Read MoreHis paintings deftly combine representation and abstraction, linear draughtsmanship and colouration, minimalism and gesturalism. Over the course of his career Hernández has mixed diverse references: a physicality that recalls Action Painting, the shorthand figuration of cartoons, and passages evoking painterly precedents. This stylistic multiplicity grows out of Hernández's detailed and informed knowledge of art history. While his references are broad he has, in recent years, developed a specific engagement with the work of old and modern masters from his native country, Spain, as a way of getting in touch with his personal and artistic roots. For Hernandez, such references are signposts rather than subjects in their own right. Distilled to essences of line, colour and form, his paintings always foreground the particularities of the medium, its defining characteristics.
In keeping with the breadth of his influences, Hernández employs a variety of seemingly contradictory techniques including washing, scraping, and working directly from paint tubes. While some works are the result of conspicuous addition, his 'wash' canvases, by contrast, are produced by layering and removing paint with a heavy-duty pressure washer. Almost archaeological in nature, this method involves digging through pigment to expose the canvas beneath, a process that the artist associates with sculptural carving. The resulting paintings have a dramatic, exploratory quality.
His is a meticulous and process-oriented approach, and his paintings openly display the triumphs and struggles of the artist's practice, creating a tension between control and chaos, rehearsal and re-evaluation, making and unmaking, beauty and destruction.
Hernández was born in 1975 in Madrid, where he currently lives and works. Solo exhibitions of his work have recently been presented at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2015; Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, France, 2014; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Austria, 2007, 2010, 2014; Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland, 2010, 2014; Galerie Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid, Spain, 2006, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, and Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, 2013. The artist has also participated in group shows including Das Allerletze Prof. Winkler Stipendiumat Kunstverein Weiden, Austria, 2013; Alone Together at the Rubell Family Collection / Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami, USA, 2013; Dialogos DKV - Patio Herreriano at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Espanol, Valladolid, Spain, 2013; Berlin Status 1 at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, 2012 and Berlin Klondyke 2011 at Art Center Los Angeles, USA, 2011. His work is in numerous institutional and private collections, including National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, UK; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain; Helga de Alvear Foundation, Cáceres, Spain; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Kunstdepot Göschenen, Switzerland and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada.
Text courtesy Victoria Miro.
