PIPO HERNÁNDEZ RIVERO. TWO STEPS AWAY
12.09 - 09.11
In Two Steps Away, Pipo Hernández Rivero challenges traditional notions of displacement and belonging, presenting migration not as a fleeting or burdensome event that will eventually be resolved, but as a fundamental part of the civilizing process—a constant driving force in the history of humanity.
The artist’s paintings, executed with a high level of technical skill, harken back to the tradition of landscape painting, from the frescoes of the Villa of Livia to the landscape of the 19th-century Romantic crisis. This period was characterized by an exacerbation of utopias of abundance. Among them, the utopias of discovery, conquest, and territorial domination coexisted with the passionate anti-rationalist and escapist spirit of Romanticism. These landscapes, devoid of human presence, evoke a sense of virginity, reinforcing the idea of an intimate, individualistic utopia of domination. The artist critiques contemporary art conventions. Without falling into appropriation, Hernández Rivero conceptually complicates and reclaims pre-Cézanne painting, with a critical and combative stance against conventional expectations for what painting could be in the 21st century.
The frames, important elements in the exhibition, are not mere functional boundaries or decorative conventions. In modernity, the frame was disregarded under the premise of pursuing purity in painting. However, in this exhibition, the frame takes on a deeper meaning, symbolizing territory. It delineates the space of utopia as a fortress, a closed drawing within which the civilizing process occurs and outside of which chaos threatens. The frame thus becomes a symbol of contact phobia, a wall against any contamination that threatens the possibility of mixing.
The framed landscapes, pictorial utopias, are disrupted by cynical elements, such as beach sandals, the cheapest available on the market, representing the humblest form of footwear. Through the use of these seemingly simple, everyday objects, the artist speaks to how the West finds ways to trivialize such a central issue as migration and the development of civilization. The first human migrations occurred 200,000 years ago; Western modernity began with the exploration and conquest of American territories and their immediate colonization. But it was the complex cultural climate of the 19th century, fueled by escapism and rationality, passionate rebellion and sensible conformity, extraordinary scientific curiosity, and intolerant morality, that pushed these two archetypes to the heights we are most familiar with: the explorer, with audacity almost never innocent, who ventured into unknown places, and the settler, who went to the already-discovered lands to settle and try to prosper. Migratory cycles continue and will continue, but with no more virgin territories to explore. Two Steps Away poetizes about territoriality, the feeling of invasion, inevitable mixing, and the cynicism with which the West approaches these issues.
A second additional element in the exhibition is the climbing holds, an object that, according to the author, perfectly embodies the process of “sportification” of human dramas—a socio-ideological defense mechanism that Hernández Rivero critically addresses. These holds symbolize the trivialization of the struggle for survival, the overcoming of obstacles that separate us from an acceptable life. Romantic authors were, in fact, the first to explore a playful dimension of fear—Mary Shelley’s novels are proof of this. This exploration has not ceased to advance to this day. Primal fears and the confrontation with survival threats are now key elements in the entertainment industry, present in video games and virtual experiences. The climbing holds, placed on the ground, a space useless for their function, reflect the irony of how the West processes, through distance and entertainment, what in other contexts is a matter of life and death.
The third invasive element present in the pieces is the wall plug, which affects not only the painted canvas but also the wall that supports it. The grid-like arrangement of these plugs alludes to a democratizing subdivision, a metaphor for equidistance—another of the drives allied with Western self-complacency.
Nothing in this exhibition is neutral: not the walls, the floor, nor the paintings. Pipo Hernández Rivero’s exhibition presents works that explore the crisis of Western utopias, the frameworks of acceptability, and those that rise as guardians of these utopias. Rather than addressing migration as a problem/inevitability dichotomy, Two Steps Away delivers a critical discourse on the contradictions of the tormented Western spirit.