This text was published on the occasion of the fourth annual Premio Nacional de Crítica, an event established jointly by the Ministry of Culture and the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, in 2005. Serving as an annual invitational, the event provides a space for academic and theoretical meditation on the contemporary practice of art in Colombia.
Throughout this theoretical essay, the writer seeks to establish relationships between the Technoesmaltes series by Fernando Uhía and a set of hypotheses to which the series alludes. The work would seem to identify with abstract art and political, activist discourses, based on texts by the artist and works he created throughout his art life. Examples are the works in his second individual exhibition entitled Pinturas, and Clon Clown. The essay outlines a reading of Technoesmaltes as it embodies concepts that appear in the theories of late modern abstract art of the New York school. It also includes ideology that refers to what Uhía would call a “socialization strategy” (creating participation spaces that promote individuals’ recognition of themselves within their environment). Once they are proposed, these relationships are called into question. In conclusion, we must read this series as a working hypothesis in the context of magic that deceives anyone who tries to establish a reading of the work as representing some unified, coherent theoretical and aesthetic hypothesis.
Fernando Uhía (b. 1967) obtained a master of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and he is currently an associate professor in the arts department at the Universidad de Los Andes. Throughout his life as an artist, he has thought about the ideas that underlie the modern art discourse, such as “originality” and/or “copy.” His focus has been the relationship of such concepts to specific conditions: local sources, globalization, and the influence of the image. Uhía has participated in many group and individual exhibitions and has been given significant recognition in the local art world, such as a Young Talents scholarship from the Banco de la República of Colombia, in 1997, and the Premio Luis Caballero in its fourth annual event (2007).