Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce Excerpts from a Shared Horizon, a selection of recent paintings by Erick Alejandro Hernández. The exhibition will be presented in the gallery's viewing room through Friday, August 20.
The works in Excerpts all take place at the shift between night and day. Caught within the red glow of this ambiguous dawn-or-dusk, the paintings' central figures are enveloped by rings of yellow paint and submerged within green and purple shadows. Frozen within this moment, a lion settles into a wearily pensive state, while a man at the ocean pauses at the brink of coaxing a boat either away or towards himself. From the banks of the Tiber to a tropical wilderness, the figures collectively lose themselves to individual moments of contemplation.
The artist emphasizes this shared transitional timeframe by populating his paintings with the faces of his close family and friends, and with repeated motifs such as banyan trees. For instance, the foreground figure in Tocando el Tres is a younger version of the same man with the boat, while the lion resting under a tree is also seen intertwined with a man reclining by the Tiber. Such repetitions create intimacy across these small- to mid-size works, much like seeing the same beloved actors in different plays.
Left deliberately vague is the precise nature of the relationship between Hernández and these people and objects, or even whose thoughts and memories are being portrayed. A fragile paper boat may gesture to themes of migration framing the Cuban-born artist's life and those of his loved ones. However, the particulars of this experience, and whether it belongs to the artist, the depicted subject, or a murkier figure from the past, remain ambiguous. What emerges instead is a subtle system of motifs and signs, within which Hernández explores painting as a psychological borderland between personal history and collective experience.
Erick Alejandro Hernández received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently completing his MFA from Yale University. Previous exhibitions include group shows at Harper's Books, East Hampton, NY; Rubber Factory, New York, NY; and Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA. Hernández was most recently awarded residencies and awards from the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; Fountainhead, Miami, FL; Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Brooklyn, NY; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; and Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Montreal, Canada.