Exploding Heart

Exploding Heart - Artist Statement

The dichotomy between physical biology and consciousness in our human experience fascinates me. The heart is an organ that circulates blood through the body yet is also used as a metaphor for emotion and feeling. I think of the vital action of my own heart pumping while working out the emotional tension that makes me alive. Organic-like forms and exploding vibrant colors with blood red at their core are juxtaposed with lines inspired by wood grain. Making lines became a meditative practice and yet was also a restless, maddening process as I grew obsessed with filling empty spaces. The color explosions are an outpouring of emotional and orgasmic energy referencing mortality and impermanence.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Press Release

For Immediate Release:

CARLA HERNANDEZ

Exploding Heart

SOHO20 Gallery Chelsea

547 West 27^th Street, Suite 301

New York, NY 10001

March 30 – April 24, 2010

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 1st, 6-8pm

SOHO2O Gallery Chelsea is pleased to announce the exhibition of new work by artist Carla Hernandez. The exhibit features large-scale drawings and paintings on translucent vellum as well as small drawings on wood.

Exploding Heart is a visual colloquy traversing both heartache and happiness.

Central to Hernandez’s work is the dichotomy that the heart is an organ that circulates blood through the body yet also serves as an emotional metaphor. Visceral reality combines with intuitive compulsion in her work as she seeks a sort of reconciliation.

In the works Somewhere In There I Am and I Would Rather Go Like This, carefully rendered lines gather concentrically around bursts and folds of color. In others works, a union of both plant and human anatomy can be seen as a metaphor for the physical and intellectual conundrum Hernandez dissects as problematic to human existence.

Carla Hernandez was born in Newark, New Jersey and currently lives and works in New York. She received her BA in Visual Art from Rutgers University in 1999. A painter and performance artist, Hernandez has exhibited and performed in group shows at galleries and alternative spaces in New York and New Jersey, including Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries, Kenkeleba Gallery and ABC No Rio. She has been a member of Soho20 Gallery Chelsea since spring 2009. This is her first exhibit at SOHO20 Gallery Chelsea.

For more information please contact gallery director Jenn Dierdorf at 212.367.8994 or soho20@verizon.net