Fernando Uhía Colombia, 1967
View Gallery

Translated from Spanish

For more than two decades I have tried to work (in negative), to make art that functions as a cleaning and disinfecting machine for a specially decadent version of Colombian rhetoric, a (blind) rhetoric that puts its loquaciousness at the service of foreign spaces that are dreamed, greco-latin, invisible, plagued with artists unable to get involved in the urgent need to modernize not only political and cultural institutions but also the general view of the nation. For this, the abstract appearance is useful, as well as the massive subjugation, since they place the spectator in front of materials and visual events that are concrete and unlimited. From tempered rubber on stretchers, passing through appropriations of famous modern artists, seasoned by infamous rhetoric, to drippings immersed in ultra-shinny Formica; the machine works at great speed while it leaves highly-visual restudies in a country submerged in the false illusion of an idealized poetic past, depressingly conservative. I oppose consciously and advantageously to the (poetically) anachronic national perception, systems of production that are prosaic and superficial.

 

Por más de dos décadas años he intentado trabajar <>, hacer  un arte que funcione como una máquina limpiadora y desinfectante para  una versión especialmente decadente de la retórica colombiana, una retórica <> que pone su verborrea al servicio de lugares ajenos, soñados, grecolatinos, invisibles, plagados de artistas incapaces de involucrarse en la urgente necesidad de modernizar tanto las instituciones políticas y culturales así como la visualidad general de la nación. Para esta labor es útil la apariencia abstracta y el avasallamiento por cantidad, pues ponen al espectador frente a materiales y hechos plásticos concretos e ilimitados. Desde hules templados en bastidores, pasando por apropiaciones de famosos modernistas, condimentados de la infame retórica, hasta chorreaduras inmersas en Formicas ultra brillantes, la máquina trabaja a gran velocidad mientras va dejando residuos altamente visuales en un país hundido en la falsa ilusión de un pasado poético idealizado, deprimentemente conservador. A una percepción nacional anacrónicamente <<poética>> le opongo consciente y alevosamente sistemas de hacer prosaicos y superficiales.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

Prizes / Fellowships

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Publications

Collections

Other Artists