Manuel Hernandez, Cumbiarella, 2024
On view at Con Altura’s booth are two “mural portraits,” as the artist Manuel Hernandez calls them. These many-sided works take their shape from the unstretched animal hides onto which Hernandez has painted. At the center of each is a portrait of an Indigenous person that Hernandez has encountered going about his day in New York, where he is based—a woman named Catherine in one work here, an unnamed cumbia teacher in another. Hernandez asks his sitters if he can paint them, then invites them to his studio, where he asks his models basic questions about their lives and lets them steer the interview from there. Hernandez records each of these conversations and listens back to them as he paints their portraits. In Cumbiarella (2024), the sitter is decked out in paint-covered white paints, a rust-colored shirt, a patterned vest, aviator glasses, and a white cap; surrounding them is a group of people gathered at street vendor carts, a construction scene, hands holding art materials, two people dancing, a bustling bar in Flushing, the above-ground architecture of the 7 train, and various birds, from pigeons to a hummingbird to a duckling. Throughout are various sentence fragments that came up in their conversation: “IM ALSO A CITY GIRL,” “I FELT SAFE WITHIN THAT MESS,” “I WANTED TO BE PERFECT,” “HERE TO STAY.” In these tender portraits, Hernandez gives us insight into the inner lives of his subjects.
MAXIMILÍANO DURÓN