PISCIS
Frank Hyder

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