Zigzag of conceptualization
By Margaret Failoni

Art Opening 
Hector Velázquez
Fri, Aug 22, 7pm
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75

The Bellas Artes installation of contemporary sculpture by Hector Velázquez is a series of works that has been touring major museums in the last two years. Velázquez’s work can be best described as a conceptual interpretation of the human figure with vague overtones of surrealism.

The premeditation in the approach of the more or less academic sculptor, who makes the human figure the battlefield, is foreign to Velázquez. The academic sculptor knows beforehand the effects that can be obtained through a given type of composition and, in accordance with the lessons learned, he obtains a result that was not unforeseen.

Velázquez, on the other hand, uses his undeniable academic training as the basis of the sculpture while reinterpreting classicism to suit his purpose. His is the labor of a true craftsman, perfectly calculated in the physical creation of the pieces, but only after a zigzag of conceptualization of the work; it has everything to do with the heart of the artist’s thought process.

Studying the artist’s earlier works, we see the human figure or its parts, used in various forms, such as “Economic apparatus for living,” in which the artist himself is dressed in a white bodysuit, somewhere between a scuba diver and medical garb, with what appear to be a combination of white wires or veins circulating up and down the suit. In the series “Booths, 2002,” we witness a head with deep-set closed eyes connected to a mouth and ears.

Many of the artist’s works are to sculpture what the Polibolus Ballet Company is to dance: the sinuous prolongation of entwined limbs which metamorphose into fascinating, unknown creatures at once human and not…such as Topografia 1, 2003.

The most extraordinary part of Velázquez’s creativity is the combination of techniques and materials. Since 2002, his work has combined yarn with the molds and modeling of the figure. He adopts the techniques known as yarn-painting which we know from the Huichol indigenous community, the Nierika representations of the Huichol cosmogony made by shamans.

Hector Velázquez was born in Mexico City in 1965. After graduating from the UNAM National School of Plastic Arts, he left for Germany where he attended the University of Berlin and the Academy of Plastic Arts in Stuttgart. After several years in Germany, the artist returned to Mexico City where he now lives and works.

Margaret Failoni is an independent curator and art historian who has lived in San Miguel for 13 years, after a full-time career in Rome.