“Whew… That’s a Relief!”: The Madcap World of John Hernandez, 1978 – 2015

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Houston Museum of African American Culture

“Whew… That’s a Relief!”: The Madcap World of John Hernandez, 1978 – 2015

Friday, Apr. 22, 2016

06:30 PM
US/Central

Opening Reception

The Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) is pleased to present “Whew… That’s a Relief!” The Madcap World of John Hernandez, 1978 – 2015, a retrospective exhibition by San Antonio artist John Hernandez that spans four decades of creative activity. Organized by The Gallery at UTA (University of Texas Arlington) and curated by its Director, Benito Huerta, the exhibition is composed of items on loan from numerous public and private collections and museums. The selection of works selected illustrates a progression of ideas and techniques that Huerta has followed and admired since his first studio visit with Hernandez in 1985.

The brightly colored, cartoon-like images depicting bizarre narratives and quirky vignettes display the energetic playfulness slightly twisted by a dark sense of humor that are the hallmarks of the artist. Through a variety of media including prints, drawings, paintings, large and small-scale sculptural objects and monumental wall reliefs, installed alongside site-specific wall paintings, this exhibition has been organized to illuminate the highly colorful career of this imaginative Texas artist

About the Opening Reception

As Huerta states in the exhibition catalog foreword, “The exuberance, the color, the imagery, and the technical dexterity” of John’s work captivated him thirty years ago and continues to up to the present. Huerta further comments that the work “confronts issues of power, whether personal or economic ... and incorporates visual content of our time: from comic book imagery to corporate iconography, from symbols of power to MAD magazine’s “Spy” character, sprinkled with appropriated images of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth monsters and cars, mixed with Basil Wolverton inspired drawings; all spiced with color and mixed into his visual cauldron to conjure a unique and, sometimes, critical vision of the world.”