The artist's passion for nature is present since his earliest paintings, in Garden Party, 1979 (Fiesta en el Jardin) where he represents a group around a table. The aesthetic force of the background vegetation in this painting becomes its visual center, which from that moment becomes an essential element of his aesthetic language, a priority element of his, not as a metaphorical and symbolic representation, expresses the need to create a harmonious relationship with nature.
"Hyder is a master of the old technique of making images on wood. He is not inhibited by the fact that these jobs are usually done in smaller scales. He has also spontaneously experimented with printed matters. Now he uses a combination of techniques based on the idea of taking the audience into a wild and primitive environment. "(Edward Lucie-Smith, Frank Hyder Poet of a Threatened-Eden. 2008)
The multifaceted nature, the history of the conquered as metaphor are some of the fundamental reasons for Frank Hyder’s artistic proposal. With a strong influence of Pop Art represented in Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg by the mindedness and freedom that he makes use of materials and themes. He is also linked to the povera art (poor art) by his using of leaves and other materials he incorporates into his paintings, boxes or wooden stakes with which he creates his installation works.
The diversity of materials and techniques transform each piece into a beauty full of archetypal meanings, as is the relationship established with myths and images associated with the soul and the forces that beat in the darkness of our unconscious.
For him to carve wood, work on handmade paper, make use of the knot and of contemporary materials such as resin, to echo ancestral, wild and contemporary forms, they are proposals largely born from his personal experience, as was his meeting with the Venezuelan Amazonia. He delves into the myths and rituals immortalized by wild societies such as Piaroa ,Yanomami, Yekuana and others that have inspired aesthetic proposals that bury their roots in the Latin American imaginary. Among these series stands out the one presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas Sofia Imber, at the exhibition "Endangered Speeches", 1996, where he takes the spectator to that paradoxical encounter between that culture and its environment, through installation parts where nudity of the wild man is an integral part of nature as a symbol of the recovery of paradise, showing how these cultures relate more harmoniously with their environment than our civilization, by a concept of progress and prosperity against nature.
In his paintings, nature invades the space with compositions where sometimes there does not exist a unique visual center, but multiple centers, since he wants to convey that notion of Edenic nature associated with the ancient societies. Sometimes this notion is exaggerated because the civilizations such as the Mayan became extinct by the strong environmental impact with their natural environment. But if something is true, is the diversity of species and ethnic groups, full of wisdom from our jungles which are also one of the main lungs of the planet and destroying it, at the fast pace it is being done it will lead us to an apocalyptic destiny.
And these dimensions of reality were exhibited in museums of Central America, Venezuela and Colombia. In the Jacobo Borges Museum (2001), Caracas, he represented the lugubrious cloak of the missionaries, with hoods hiding faces and bell-shaped skirts that resemble the structure of the cross, which are confronted with thin and bare bodies and of traditional cultures.
Among airs of mystery in his paintings and wood cuts, he represents this clash among civilizations, difficult to imagine for its paradoxical cruelty, which the artist captures through a synthetic figuration, characterized by a color which establishes dialectic between light and darkness, between chaos and order. Brightness emanating from the characters, revealing the nightmares that hide darkness and that the audience recreates in his imagination. It is art as a symbol of historical processes that changed our past and foreshadow our present.
Hyder creates art techniques to represent these truths, where he makes use of traditional materials such as handmade paper, surfaces of wood excavated with gouges to create depths in the plane, typical of his artistic language. From fortuitous encounters and chances in this Caribbean land full of chromatic contrasts, he created works in which the rainforest shines between the greenness and yellow, red, blue and black spots, as they appear in the work "Rainforest" (Selva Lluviosa), 1996 . In colors that fly in flocks of macaws announcing the misty Amazonian dawns, or the mysterious darkness that slips through the jungle to stalk its prey in the predatory and shamanic shadow of the jaguar.
The traditional mythologies have been inspired by the chromatic brilliance, to create a symbolic beauty that few artists have paid attention to. One of Frank Hyder’s greatest successes has been staying focused on these realities, through the body drawings which are reflected in his pictorial creations and the forms that these generate in his material culture. Creating various proposals that reveal these realities, as expressed in the series "Free Land" presented at the Medicci Gallery, 2003.
He turns the ordinary into sacred transfiguration such as associating the foothills of the shacks of Caracas with pyramidal structures that inspired in him a group of works from the series "New World Landscape" (Paisaje del Nuevo Mundo), 2001 where he leaves the ideological discourse and the report to see our hills, covered with shacks from a geometric and ironic perspective. Thus, a number of works he made in the workshop of San Diego de Los Altos in the outskirts of Caracas arise, where he assumes the shacks as cubes since most are created with remains of wooden and zinc boxes.
Through the recreation of Aboriginal aesthetics, its natural and everyday life environment in the shanty cities of Caracas, he generates a language that is enriched by direct contact, making his work a fullness of vital and archetypal echoes. The fallen leaves from the tops of the tall trees of the rainforest, he incorporates them into his work, with texture and color, even the feeling of spongy soil typical of the Amazon, where life is reborn from death, sense that it is transmitted installation proposals.
This reflects the illusion of paradise, as the rainforests live in a fragile ecological balance, where death must continuously reabsorb. Hence, in his facilities not only the walls, the ceiling intervene, but also the floor by covering it with fabrics painted with vegetation, that combined with jungle sounds create in the spectator an approach to that environment.
The two-dimensionality is combined with the three-dimensional, in large canvases with fish that hatch in a boiling of life, between leaves and metaphorical structures of wild spirits, created with wooden stakes tied to each other and covered in fabric, generating transparencies so that the spectator can envision the outside and the inside, of matter and the spirit, inspired by the aesthetics and constructive technology of our ancestors.
He also incorporates this structure to installation proposals where he creates visual metaphors of the curiaras (canoes) created by aboriginal people boring through logs or using moorings in the bark that some trees release. Vessels that seem like leaves, in their fragility, on the rivers and streams that remain floating in a poetic balance.
As an artist from Pennsylvania, United States, he is inspired by these topics, so far as to venture into the jungle and be subjugated by its mysterious beauty. He is motivated by something more than the spirit of adventure. This way he is maturing his vision and aesthetics as experimental language where he is trapped by the lattice of nature. His style moves away from the academic, as well as he uses the brush, he also makes incisions with gouges in the pictorial surfaces of wood, to violate the plan and emphasize the depths. It is a pictorial technique with traces of woodcut prints and the assembly, in which he reuses the fragments of carved pieces of wood, to create effects in the work of feathers, wrinkles and beards on their faces. Thus, he creates a tension between the gap of the groove, which becomes part of the skins of these characters and the cover with recycled materials. The texture that the artist manages to create, resemble vegetable skins, that is the reason they have been exposed frameless, floating in space, to create an effect of organic lightness.
In the faces stands out the series "Shamans" full of organic textures which metaphor that intimate relationship with the cosmos that exists between ancient societies, and through this character there are created many of the myths that generate strong links with the environment around them. The skins of these faces seem to emanate from the earth by the handmade paper with which they are created. This artistic language is characterized by the richness of their textures to convey the feeling of being in the instincts of nature.
The faces are not only limited to shamans, but the jungle man, warriors, hunters ... One is before a typology of the face where there are present the body designs of these ethnic groups. The wavy lines on the face and body are similar to the water; the points to the sun and moon, the serpentine curves of the primordial serpent, the ridges to the maze, to the water waves, and to the eternal return.
Through the faces the artist also represents himself, identifying with the lives of others through the different faces he paints, as in every human being cohabits humanity.
"I have always been here.
I have always wanted to be different.
I have gotten used to myself,
despite the changes.
It is everything I need and everything I am
yet would be another. “
(Frank Hyder 2005)
Within these aesthetic expressions, the inflatable jungle face created for the Miami Art Fair, is an achievement in this series, the artist did not just create a face with inflatable polymer form of a, using his color as usual in this type of inflatable sculptures. Painted surface but conveying the spirit of jungle in the giant face, body painting and elements of a being expressed in a ratio of body clothing deep rapport with the cosmos. Thus, painting knots in her hair, seeds, feathers with its connotations associated with the shamanic flight.
"Water has always fascinated me since my early works because it sets up a game of changing colors, movement and symbolic qualities. Mankind has always had a hypnotic attraction to it. In our case, water has attracted us because there is, in our garden, a pond with Koi fish, which I enjoyed for over ten years. "(Frank Hyder, testimony, 2005)
Water in the form of rivers, ponds and life, is another of his constants, is dominated by the same spirit that moves his creations inspired by the jungle. This eclectic language developed since his early works, achieves a new development in the series of fish, mainly the Koi, which generates an opposite technical treatment. The textures and depths achieved by digging into the wood become depths of various thicknesses, glassy, which transmit in each piece the feeling of being in an aquatic space. One of the most striking dimensions of this technique is the strong color contrast. The Koi do not look for hyper-realism, but use the sinuous form to create a proposal that is under tension between abstraction and realism through the pictorial stain and an archetypal form of the fish, characterized by its formal beauty, the delicacy of its body and the colors with which covers its aquatic skin .
The Koi is a fish full of symbolism and has been taken as a symbol of royalty from very early times in Asia; hence it has been taken care of in delicate ceramic vases. The Koi is currently present in almost all the fish tanks of the planet for its harmonious beauty, characterized by unusual colors in fish, such as whites, reds, blues that in a graceful body, harmonizes with a wide, undulating tail. Its background within his work would be in the series "Rhythms" where the tent is dug on the wood surface to turn the line in the groove, between diverse backgrounds that highlight this aesthetic resource. The rhythm is generated between the shoals transmits a climate of entropy, which differs from the koi that emanates a sense of inner peace. He introduces in them the resin to create various levels of depth that give each canvas a false depth, transforming the work into a visual trap.
Frank Hyder is emphatic when saying that his problem is not to imitate nature, but turning its forms into metaphors of a harmonious relationship between man and nature. These are canvases where the fish are in groups where the artist is creating the backgrounds, the waves that create visual tension with the shoals. He paints on each layer of resin, in order to create the sense of illusory depth that characterizes this series. By joining this innovative technique to fish-like form as the Koi, he creates a work that generates a new phase in his artistic language that unites the beauty to the aesthetic and metaphorical force.
This visual language is also used in the "Lotus" characterized by a lively chromatic, where unusual color of unusual contrasts are harmonized to create sets of waterscapes. The work acquires a strong symbolic resonance with the meaning of "Nelumbo nucifera" the sacred lotus or the rose of the Nile. The Latin term: nucifera refers to the lotus nuts, which are its edible fruits and can germinate after centuries, due to this feature they have become a symbol of eternity and lighting. It is a plant which roots grow toward the depth and from which it springs a flower on the water surface. Process that converts the lotus in symbol of mystical enlightenment, for this reason, in India it is also called the sacred lotus. In these works the artist resizes plants, makes them his, through his pictorial language, full of joy and grace as well as works inspired by the fish. In this way the artist Frank Hyder reveals in each of his series a deep sense of balance and an aesthetic full of spirituality.
Eduardo Planchart Licea
Caracas. 2011
Very meaningful and rewarding is to introduce an artist who has consistently been close to nature and his relation to man, with that whole world to discover, with characters, travels and disputes and of the adventure that is generated by breaking into it. In Latin America, Frank Hyder, an American artist, has established his link with that environment that led him to a fascination for the Aboriginal people, their faces and questioning glances, shamans, a whole sylvan iconography full of dazzling tones, fishing trips or searches in imaginary canoes . In that scenario, Hyder definitely was linked to a colorful world of discovery that has been brought from a recent past and disappears just as modern man progresses and moves forward.
Frank Hyder arrives in Caracas for the first time in 1991 and since then he has been a persistent host of his creation that has always been linked to the relationship between man and nature. His doing and thinking has covered museums, fairs and galleries in Coro, Merida, Maracaibo and Caracas, always showing that so typical conceptual point through the kindness of his refined technique and craft in the management of the elements of that primitive world that through his characters and environments he tries to keep alive.
By 2001 Sofia Imber said about the artist: "Hyder is certainly a master, in the plural dimension of the word, which reveals him as the one who seeks ways of teaching what should be learned. Many generations, workshops, have nourished from his researches, from his interpretation of the intersection between cultures and natural environment and the way that he has manifested in materials and concepts to help build awareness and greater sensitivity, but at the same time more universal, of the world as human habitat "Sofia Imber.”Memories of the New World" Jacobo Borges Museum, Caracas, 2001-2002.
We have presented two solo exhibitions of Frank Hyder. "Faces" in 2003 was also exhibited in our premises in Coral Gables, Florida, USA where there were shown faces and scenes of Aboriginal people and shamans in wood carved by the artist himself, incorporating the chips into smaller assemblies that suddenly opened as boxes or small items with doors. He also used his "canvases" made by him from the fusion of tissue paper, layers of acrylic and other natural materials such as leaves and tiny branches that were incorporated as collages between the layers giving them a unique and very particular texture.
Passionate about the aboriginal and what emanates from the natural environment, he returns in 2006 with the exhibition "FREE LAND". New faces with enigmatic gazes and even melancholic of the one that observes and judges, they are witness that imaginary world that remains immersed in the indigenous, natural as the testimony that Jose Pulido writes in the text of the catalog, "There is a Frank Hyder painting: he can be subtle with a stroke and overwhelming with brush . His characters have a wicker skin: their epidermis becomes an enchantment of carved wood, of chips and shells, a bamboo mask. He is a colorist that moves his tones as the wind in the foliage, as a swirl in water, as fire in a mountain "Jose Pulido.”Free Land" Medici Gallery, Caracas, 2006.
This time, Frank Hyder returns with "PISCES" and shows us, with more energy multicolored fish that sail in the calm of ponds where the colorfulness and a soft but steady movement guides the small shoal of fish to invade the serenity of the lotus flowers that the artist shows us in his best stroke. It is a new cycle for the artist that fully develops, where he adds a soft and bright texture that covers and further enriches his work establishing the surprising and inevitable link of the viewer with the work.
Tomas. Kepets
Caracas, 2011
Born in October 1951
Education
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, M.F.A. 1975
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, 1973
Maryland Institute College of Fine Art, Baltimore MD, B.F.A., 1972
Solo Exhibits
2003
Medicci Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
Medicci Gallery, Miami, FL
Portland City Hall, Small Works, Portland, OR
2002
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Gallery of Banco de la Republica of Bucaramanga Columbia SA
Art Gallery La Otra Banda, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela
Gallery of Foundation The Route of Art, Tovar, Venezuela
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Museum Jacobo Borges, Caracas, Venezuela
2001
Museum of Contemporary Art Zulia, "Memories of the World", Maracaibo, Venezuela
Colombian American Center Agreement, Medellin, Colombia
El Cevaz, Maracaibo, Venezuela
Museum of Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela
2000
More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Excelsior Gallery, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico
1999
Butters Gallery, Ltd., Portland, OR
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1998
Butters Gallery, Ltd., Portland, OR
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1997
FIA, Caracas, Venezuela
Art 97 Vancouver Art Fair, Butters Gallery, Ltd., Portland, OR
King Plow Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Main Line Unitarian Church, Devon, PA
1996
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, CA
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA (February and September)
Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas Sofia Imber, Caracas, Venezuela
Contemporary Museum of Art of Coro, Coro, Venezuela
1995
Butters Gallery, Ltd. at Pacwest in Portland, OR
University Museum Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia
Colombian American Center, Bucaramanga, Colombia
Archeology Museum La Merced, Cali, Colombia
Museum of Art of Coro, Coro, Venezuela
Peruvian North American Center, Lima, Peru
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA
1994
Mazmanian Gallery, Framingham State College, Framingham, MA
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA (monotypes)
1993
Government Palace, Caracas, Venezuela
Hahn Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA
Austin Peay University, Clarksville, TN (monotypes)
Benton Gallery, Southampton, Long Island, NY
Pac West "Butters" Gallery, Portland, OR
Gallery Clave, Caracas, Venezuela
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
FAN Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1992
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
1991
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Brendan Walter Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1990
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1989
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY
Michael Dunev Gallery, San Francisco, CA
The Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA
Camden County College Art Gallery, Blackwood, NJ
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1988-1981
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1988
Ernst Alexander Gallery, Washington, DC
Michael Dunev Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1987
The Exhibition Space, New York, NY
1986
Sarah Y. Rentschler Gallery, New York, NY
1983
St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA
1982
Long Beach Island Arts Foundation, Loveladies, NJ
1980-1977
The Hahn Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA
1974
Haddonfield Arts League, Haddonfield, NJ
1972
Five West Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Collections in Museums
U.S. Embassy, Caracas, Venezuela
Museum of Contemporary Art Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela
Austin Peay University, Clarksville, TN
Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, CA
Colombian American Center, Medellin, Colombia
Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Grand Rapids, MI
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas, Venezuela
Museum of the West, Caracas, Venezuela
University Museum, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia
Ontario Museum of Art, Toronto, Canada
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Permanent -Collection
Pennsylvania Convention Center Commission, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC
Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, PA
Collective Exhibitions (Selection)
2003
Lowe Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Art in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, PA
2002
The More Gallery, Philadelhia, PA
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2001
Faculty Show, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA
2000
The National Invitational, Brenau University, Gainesville, GA
University of Pennsylvania, Penn Faculty of GSFA, New York, NY
1999
Philadelphia Museum of Art, New Acquisitions, Philadelphia, PA
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1998
Art Fair Vancouver, Vancouver BC, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1997
American Renaissance, King Plow Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
Art Fair Vancouver, Vancouver BC, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1996
Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
San Francisco Art Fair, San Francisco , CA
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Gomez Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA
1995
Pocketsize, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Artist Boxes, Arlene Busjese Gallery, Southampton, NY
Alumni - Nine From the Maryland Institute College of Art, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
The Monotype, Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA
Frame of Reference, Palo Alto Cultural Center Invitational, Palo Alto, CA
Animalia, Abington Art Center, Abington, PA
1994
National Invitational Art Exhibition, Brenau University, Gainesville, GA
The Singular Print, A Survey of Contemporary Monotypes, Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA
Between the Covers, Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA
Figurative Philadelphians, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Art and The Law, National Traveling Show, West Publishing, MN
Roger Smith Gallery, New York, NY
Wall to Wall, Benton Gallery, Southampton, Long Island, NY
1993
Hispanic Imprints, Brenau College, Gainesville, GA
Figural Philadelphia: Drawings, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Faculty Show, Moore College of Art & Design Paley Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Micro Soft, Selected Works, Seattle, WA
Icons in Contemporary Art, California Museum of Crafts, San Francisco, CA
1992
Art & The Law, West Publications, MN (traveling show)
Landscapes, F.A.N. Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Pertaining to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Art Expo, Los Angeles, CA
Art Expo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dreamers, FAN Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Portraits, The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1991
Monument, The More Gallery, Philadelphia
Art of the State, State Museum, Harrisburg, PA
Group Show, Brendan Walter Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Group Show, Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY
National Invitational Show, Brenau College, Gainesville, GA
Pennsylvania Artists, Josiah White Exhibition Space, Jim Thorpe, PA
1990
The Book as the Metaphor for Art, San Francisco Arts and Crafts Museum, San Francisco, CA
Director's Choice, J. Noblett Gallery, Sanoma, CA
Expanding the Figurative Imagination, Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY
The Chicago International Art Expo, Zaks Gallery, Chicago, IL
Pennsylvania Artists, Josiah White Exhibition Center, Jim Thorpe, PA
1989
Physicality, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Art Against Aids, Butterfields Warehouse, San Francisco, CA
Art of the State, Pennsylvania State Museum, Harrisburg, PA (First Prize)
Nocturnes, The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Assemblage, The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Hard Choices/Just Rewards, A traveling exhibition of work by recipients of Visual Arts Fellowships awarded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 1988 and 1989.
1988
Consciousness and Reality, The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Selected Gallery Artists, Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY
The Ties That Bind, Michael Dunev Gallery, San Francisco, CA
St. Mary's Museum, Collectors of Marin County, Marin County, CA
Introductions, A Selection From Gallery Artists, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
Members Gallery, Albright Knox Museum, NY
1987
From Philadelphia, Ernst Alexander Gallery, Washington, DC
Recent Acquisitions, Michael Dunev Gallery, San Francisco, CA
The Show of Hands, The Brody Gallery, Washington, DC
Chicago International Exposition, Chicago, IL
1986
First Impressions, Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, NY
1985
Return to the Figure, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loreto, PA
Philadelphia Paintings, University Museum, Indiana Univ. of PA
1984
The Spirit of the Coast, Monmouth Museum, Monmouth, NJ
1983
Allegorical and Narrative Painting, The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1982
Personal Narrative Paintings, Butcher and More Galleries, Philadelphia, Pa
1980
People, Places and Things, U.S. Courthouse, Philadelphia, PA
1976
21 Young Artists, Long Beach Island Arts Foundation, Loveladies, NJ
National Pastel Show, New York, NY
1975
New Talent, Marion Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1972
Baltimore Museum Juried Shows, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Corporate Collections
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Elton John
ARA Services Corporation
Bell Atlantic Corporation
Berwind Trust Co.
Franklin Mint
GE Corporation
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.
Microsoft
Saks Fifth Avenue
Terminal Freezers
Wyndham Franklin Plaza
Prizes and Awards
2001
Senior Fulbright of Venezuela
U.S. Embassy Cultural Grant, Caracas, Venezuela
Mid Atlantic National Endowment Award for Crafts & Sculpture
2000
Moore College of Art & Design Faculty Development Grant
1999
Brenau National Invitational First Prize
Moore College of Art & Design Faculty Development Grant
1995
International Arts Program Network Award (Peru & Bolivia)
1994
International Arts Program Network Award (Colombia & Venezuela)
Commission 1% for Public Art Award, Oxnard, CA
1993
Pennsylvania State Council of the Arts Grant
U.S. Information Service Grant to Venezuela
Moore College of Art Faculty Development Grant
National Endowment for the Arts, Mid Atlantic Regional Visual Arts Fellowship
1989
Best of Show, Penn State Museum
1988
Pennsylvania State Council of the Arts Grant
Moore College of Art Faculty Development Grant
1986
Moore College of Art Faculty Development Grant
Bibliography (Selection)
2002
"Thoroughly Frank", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ed Suzanski, October 4
"Nature and symbols give life to the works of Frank Hyder", El Nacional, July 15
"Frank Hyder brings memories of the new world", El Globo, July 11
"Frank Hyder is inspired by our original culture", El Mundo, July 10
2001
"Feeling America", Panorama, Alexis Blanco, November 8
"Frank Hyder brought to Maracaibo his memories of the new world. La Verdad, November 5
2000
The Philadelphia Inquirer Weekend, "Three Travelers", April 7
1999
"Heads Up", City Paper, Robin Rice, May 21
"Nearing the 'Heart of Darkness', Art Matters, Andrew Mangravite, May
"Personal space, wax works", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski, November 28
1997
"Games of the gaze at Maccsi", El Universal, Carlos Delgado Flores, July 7
1996
Economy Today, March 8
Economy Today, March 7
"Fast Art", Magazine Feriado, Maria Jesus Rodriguez, March 3
Economy Today, March 1
"The soul of the jungle on a canvas", Zeta, Beatriz Sogbe, February 29
"Shopping", Economy Today , February 28
"Hyder in search of holders", El Nacional, Mori Ponsowy, February 17
"Speeches in extinction, Frank Hyder", La Brujula, February 3
1995
"Mystery and tolerance in the work of Frank Hyder", El Colombiano, Beatriz Gomez, August 30
El Mundo, August
"Antioquia Television, “Speeches in extinction”
"A salute to the artists of Northern Liberties", Art Matters, Glenn Curry, July/August
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski, July 28
"Artists of Northern Liberties exhibit works at Paley Center", Chestnut Hill Local, Rita Beyer, July 13
"Northern Liberties found to harbor art", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski, July 7
"Animals and giant piles: On view at Abington Art Center", Montgomery Newspapers, Jeanne Schwarzer, June 28
1994
"Birthday T-Shirt Draws Attention", Art Business News, Sept.
"In Search of the Spiritual in Contemporary Art", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski, May 13
"Ancient Spirit Imbues Modern 5-Artist Show", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Victoria Donohoe, May 1
"Ancient Spirit in a Modern Context", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Victoria Donohoe, May 1
"At Chester Springs, The Artist as Visionary Explored in Important Exhibition", Art Matters, Anna B. Francis, May
"Public art, my eye", Welcomat, Daisy Fried, March 9
1993
"Art at the Convention Center", The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski
"Wall to Wall, Benton Gallery", New York Times, December 5
"Fox and Hyder", The East Hampton Star, Rose C.S. Slivka, October 21
"In The Tradition", Art News
"Frank Hyder recreates the place of the spirits", El Globo, Moraima Guanipa, August 18
"Frank Hyder exhibits his 'Interactions'", El Nacional, August 15
1992
New Art Examiner, Donald Bohn, Review of "Dreams", FAN Gallery
"A Bit of Artistic This and That", Welcomat, Andrew Mangravite, September 2
New Art Examiner, Tom Csaszar, February/March
"Dominion: The World of Man and Beast", Art Matters, Fred B. Gable, March 6
1991
A Gathering of Momentum, Essay Catalog, Charles More
The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 28
East Philadelphia Sun, March
"Strong displays", San Jose Mercury News, Dorothy Burkhart, March 8
Venezuela, Essay Catalog, Kenneth Baker
1990
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Sozanski, September 27
El Universal, Maritza Jimenez, "In the Park of the West there is a bridge for life", August 18
"Museum of the west will be completed next year", La Religion, August 10
"The old west will look better with three new museums", El Nacional, Yasmin Monsalve, July 20
Publications:
2001
Memories of the New World, Cevas, Maracaibo, Venezuela
Catalogue Colombian Center Agreement
Memories of the New World catalog published by Museum of Contemporary Art Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela and the U.S. Embassy, Caracas, Venezuela
1999
Memories, Excelsior catalog
1995
Speeches in Extinction catalog, Exhibition Universitario Museum, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia
1994
Seattle Art Fair, brochure catalog
1993
Interactions Catalogue, La Government Office, Caracas, Adriana Meneses
The Art of Watercolor, Watson & Guptel, Charles LeClair
1991
"Frank Hyder Catalog", Kenneth Baker, Brendan Walter Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Color in Contemporary Painting, Watson & Guptel, Charles LeClair
1990
"Kaleidoscope", Georgia Pacific Corporate Communications, March
"USA Express", Tokyo, Japan, January
1989
"Les Pleurants", Michael Dunev
1988
Review of The Lawrence Oliver Gallery Fall Show, Chicago New Art Examiner, December
1987
"Frank Hyder Catalog", Exhibition Space Show, New York, NY
1986
"Frank Hyder Recent Work", Catalog of the Sarah Rentschler Show, New York, NY
Classing Frank Hyder only as an artist of ecological theme is to shed little light on the obsessions and concerns that constitute his work, contemporarily effective. For the illustrated reading by Fernando Savater, environmentalists are fundamentalists, that constantly struggle to get out of the utopia of modernity, perhaps moving toward a future - or returning to a past - attached to nature and its inexorable laws, to which we are still subject, even though modernity. While his hewn woods, gesturally intervened, forming altarpieces, altars or boxes, objects of ritual content, clearly express his concern about the extremely precarious relationship - between man and nature, his approach to the ancestral does not occur as an insurgency versus technology, or global, but rather venturing a dialogue with multicultural.
There is some common sense in his concerns, if we remember Jefferson criticized the cities in the name of democracy and a political empiricism, which Emerson also did on behalf of a metaphysics of nature and that Thoreau in Walden or life of forests (1854) proposed a return to a kind of rural state that is supposed to be compatible with the economic development of an industrial society that allows by itself to ensure freedom, blooming of the personality and even the real sociability; ideas that almost a century after the hippie movement took as its own for the establishment of community experiments.
Smithson, American artist of land art wrote in 1966 an article entitled The entropy and the new monuments where he presents, under entropic vision of the future of the universe, the earth as a closed system that only has a certain number of resources. Aware of this entropic geology by whose action the earth materials evolve and become worn out, Smithson was more concerned with other type of entropy: the cultural.
Based on the thesis of Lévi-Strauss, of the existence of hot cultures that generate a lot of entropy for being structurally complex societies and cold cultures, which for being primitive or simple hardly generate entropy, before the wearing out of our culture for being highly developed, he proposed combating cultural entropy, with no nostalgic or romantic solutions as simplifying the structures of our culture going back to primitive origins, to a time and an economy that no longer point to the future to dwell on cyclic states, as in the bottom all the fundamentalisms propose .
Combating entropy of the West from within the system and through art was his proposal, and it there is a point of agreement with Hyder, beyond generational proximity. As Hyder’s interest should not be considered merely environmentalist, the encounter of the multicultural does not show only an ethnographic emphasis: nothing further from the obsessions of the artist that the pursuit of the Noble Savage. Focusing the dialogue on the ancestral, his work is devoted to the recovery of a memory of the sight: that of man's relationship with the natural order in our days so full of information and contingency, because the more we know more we forget.
Already in the catalog of his exhibition at the MACCSI, in 1996, we noted that his work refers to those basic principles of ancestral communion that exist between art and the cosmos, a kind of universal invocation to preserve creation. With him, we are before an artist whose passion for saving the planet from a possible extinction, overcomes the pamphlet and transforms into a language of profound artistic quality. His work and his thinking, close to the conceptual and physical space in Latin America brought him to our country in 1991, bringing pieces where the combination of the strength of the trade and technical mastery of the experimental nature in dealing with the material stood out. His speech is enhanced by the dimension that the reflection gives on the danger of the imminent disappearance of cultural and ecological communities in a planet infuriated by the excesses of a misconceived political and technological progress. Wood and paint is transmuted into pure energy and transmit their own cry against the abuses that impede the worthy living in harmony with the environment, making of his an art in open dialogue with the sensitivity and awareness of an existence questioned by ourselves.
But he must be recognized for something more than for his work as an artist concerned with the fate of the species, this could only be achieved by taking his obsessions to his vocation for teaching. Hyder is certainly a teacher, in the plural dimension of the word, which reveals him as one who is always looking for ways to teach what should be learned. Not a few generations workshops have fed on his research, of his interpretation of the intersection between cultures and natural environment and the way he has translated them into materials and concepts, to help build a closer awareness and sensitivity , yet more universal, of the world as habitat of the human being.
This exhibition pays homage to his dual role as artist and teacher, giving him the multiplying capacity of the museum institution. That is a wake-up call to the reality of our precarious human ecology and a summons for the search of solutions to reverse its ostensible deterioration.
Sofía Imber
"Memories of the New World"
Museum Jacobo Borges
November 4,2001 to May 16, 2002
Caracas, Venezuela
Interview with Mr. Tomás Kepets, director of the Medicci Gallery
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"During those two decades, Galeria Medicci advanced into a river of creations and continues to show the majors artists, the vanguard of every moment, lucidity and everything that bridges with spiritual values. The experiences accumulated in more than two decades have sharpened the dynamics of today ". José Pulido
Works of renowned artists in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America such as Manuel Mendive, Carlos Luna and the American sculptor Manuel Carbonell, as well as Venezuelan expats based in Paris, France, Annette Turrillo and Karim Borjas.
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Karim has successfully infiltrated by the techniques of painting and sculpture, as well as photography and the graphic arts. Born in Caracas in 1959. His initial studies develop them in the Sch...
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Frank Hyder has participated in more than 150 group shows and has had over 80 solo exhibitions throughout North, South and Central America, including 10 individual exhibitions in New York City. ...
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Equipped with a unique style, the works of Carlos Luna is definitely captivating. His paintings and sculptures are accompanied by drawings and ceramics combined with his extensive graphic work th...
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Submerged in the unfathomable labyrinths of being, Annette also inquiries about her own condition as a woman, her works are also constituted as a self-expression and are the faithful mirror refle...
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