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Taka Fernández. The End of History and the Poisonous Hydra, 2008. Mixed media on canvas. 74 3/4 x 102 in. (190 x 260 cm.).
  

  Solo Show
Taka Fernández
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Issue #71 Dec - Feb 2009
Institution: Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil

Ruben Bonet


There is no place for metaphors in the Taka Fernández exhibit entitled ¿El Fin del Fin de la Historia y la Hidra Venenosa¿ (The End of the End of History and the Venomous Hydra). On entering the exhibit, one might think at first that a bombing had just taken place and that one did not realize it for some reason. The viewer¿s gaze is first drawn to the ceiling, to ensure that the nearly ten-foot-long missile lying on the floor had not just landed. The exhibit feels like a war zone; many of the pieces are like snapshots of the minute after a great holocaust, the early hours of a new apocalyptic era. They are very similar to the news images of mangled metal and burned bodies from the aftermath of bombings that have taken place in Iraq, Pakistan, or London.
It is difficult to speak of a retrospective of an artist who is just over forty years of age, but this exhibit renders this plausible because it presents the many phases of Fernandez¿s artistic endeavor through his career of more than a decade. The work focuses on themes of great importance to the artist: the criticism and satire of what Fernandez considers savage capitalism (including the commercialization of human relationships), a determined stand against imperialism, and the search for fate through the teachings of the I Ching oracle. One result of this obsession with telling the future takes the form of an installation of notebook pages filled with enlarged, photocopied hexagrams and annotations that cover the walls of a room, resembling a great musical score or a secret cartography of intimate symbols.
According to Fernandez, the exhibition is organized around a narrative of images based on an aesthetic of chaos, informing a reading with rhizomatic ramifications and generating a weave of meanings drawn from recurrent themes. This chaotic organization eliminates the symbolic hierarchy of objects and their representations, no matter if it is a large-format piece, or a fragment of an installation of sheets of paper with work notes, or manipulated pages from magazines, or stained pages, or small drawings with frames and without. The large-format works and the pages from the workbooks share the status of works in progress. Everything appears to indicate that the placement of the elements in the work is the result of a choice that affects time (as it pertains to the creative process) and freezes it in a precise instant that retains its sketch-like nature. But nothing would indicate that a Medusa drawn on parchment and stuck to the canvas with adhesive tape could suddenly take off and move to the corner of the painting or even onto another work. Everything would change, yet the essence (the discourse) would remain the same¿the permanently essential that is discussed in the I Ching. The workbooks are plagued with monsters¿the Payaso (Clown) stands out, representing capitalism in its most cruel and sardonic representation¿and are based on science-fiction films from the fifties and on comic books. These, along with the art of tattooing, are Fernandez¿s main aesthetic references and serve not only to showcase the creative process but the life of the artist as well. On the borders of these ¿artistic papers¿ are personal notes, small drawings, telephone numbers, and interjections such as ¿Sueñen, Nuevo Mundo, Lástima . . .¿ (Dream, New World, It¿s a Shame . . .)
Fernández shares a preference for grotesque aesthetics with other artists of his generation, like Dr. Lakra or Toño Camuñas. With his display of cabinet installations and his apocalyptic paintings, Fernández appears determined to maintain a discourse against the market. Aside from some of his compositions that resemble Op Art in their effects, one could affirm that the work by ¿El Taka¿ is an exercise in ugliness (feísmo). He uses color combinations, strokes, and stains that convey aggression, anxiety, and the foretelling of dark times. In this instance, painting becomes a chromatic radiograph of the state of society, which according to El Taka is not very healthy.
Completing the exhibit is an installation that is more playful in nature. It is a tunnel, a sort of scaled-down particle accelerator created with assembled wood panels and an interior covered by vinyl impressions: reproductions of geometric works made with gold leaves over fluorescent yellow or green surfaces illuminated with a black light (the predominant hues in Fernández¿s work are yellow, green, and black). The result is a three-dimensional optical play similar to those created by Vasarely, but this one is considerably more distorted and strident.
Mirrors on both ends distort the perception of physical reality, communicating to the viewer that everything is a dream or a nightmare. Perhaps after the predicted debacle (the postmodern and opportunistic interpretation of the article by Fukuyama entitled The End of History), there is in fact a certain order within the chaos from which another kind of reality can be constructed. Once that possible future becomes a reality, perhaps the Fernández painting will become transparent.

 


 

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