Hernán Rivera Luque

For his first solo project in New York City, Rivera will present a series of collages from his most recent body of work. Varying in size, the abstract collages weave together colorful layers of adhesive vinyl on recycled industrial-use plastic boards. The vinyl material is sourced via a process of gathering advertisement posters which Rivera then dissects. The consequent shapes are not deliberately formed but are the leftovers determined via the purposeful removal of all recognizable content. Rivera’s extraction of the various sections of color, pattern and gradation then form the palette he uses to create the collages.

Similarly, the smaller paper collages on view are made from magazine advertisements which Rivera dismantles to mine for their shapes and colors. These arbitrary shapes are then layered together and sandwiched between glass forming new shapes within the negative space.

In both bodies of work Rivera has created a method of working in which his role is more akin to an instrument or a channeller that exposes the forms and colors within the advertisements. The collages are detached from any intended personal visual narrative but instead create their own language and live in a space of liminality between the original objective of the ad and the imagined landscapes, objects, body parts and faces which materialize subjectively for each viewer.

Hernán Rivera Luque was born in Santiago, Chile. He currently lives and works in New York City. His work has recently been shown in exhibitions at Y Gallery, New York (2017), 67, New York (2016), Foundation Hippocrène, Paris (2016), El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2015), The New School, New York (2014), and Gitana Rosa Gallery, Brooklyn (2012). His work has also previously been shown at Museo de la Memoria, Santiago, Chile; La Capella, Barcelona, Spain; Museo de Art Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile; and Museo de Arte Precolombino e Indígena, Uruguay.