• About
  • The Artist & the Curator
  • Images
  • Brochure of the exhibition
  • Events
    •

    Teo Hernández: Shatter appearances

    Exhibition from 02.08 to 04.27.2019
    Curated by Andrea Ancira

    Teo Hernández, Shatter appearances

    In February 2019, Villa Vassilieff - Pernod Ricard Fellowship part­ners with Centre Pompidou to open an exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cated to the Mexican film­maker Teo Hernández. This show is curated by Andrea Ancira, first fellow of the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, a pro­gram con­ducted by Villa Vassilieff and Pernod Ricard since 2016. For this exhi­bi­tion, a selec­tion of the artist’s films, rarely shown to the public, will be pre­sented at Villa Vassilieff. This show has been con­ceived in part­ner­ship with Centre Pompidou and the Mexican Cultural Institut in Paris. Both insti­tu­tions will pre­sent exhi­bi­tions around Teo Hernández this spring 2019 as well. A first ver­sion of Shatter Appearances: Teo Hernández took place in spring 2018 at Centro de la Imagen (Mexico) in part­ner­ship with Pernod Ricard Mexico and Centre Pompidou.

    Teo Hernández’s films remind us that the sub­ver­sive power of the image does not derive from its capacity to reflect or repro­duce reality but rather from its power to summon a deeper knowl­edge or extrasen­sory per­cep­tion, like a ritual or a mag­ical expe­ri­ence. Hernández is an out­standing figure in Mexican and French cinema, who since his “self-imposed” exile in France, focused on exper­i­mental film prac­tice within the gay com­mu­nity and the Parisian coun­ter­cul­ture in the late 1960s and 70s. Similar to shamanism, Hernández’s cin­e­mato­graphic tech­nique explores other ways of seeing, hearing, and ulti­mately other bodies that may pro­voke another way to feel, to re-create and to re-write the world. With a dis­obe­dient lens, Teo Hernández trig­gers auto-reflec­tive and inti­mate exer­cises that decon­struct and ques­tion our sen­si­bil­i­ties to restore the body as an active prin­ciple or desire. In that effect, by desta­bi­lizing the fun­da­men­tals of the camera lens, and the nar­ra­tive, among other ele­ments of film lan­guage, Teo Hernández ques­tions not only his indi­vidual and artistic iden­tity, but also the func­tion of cinema itself.

    credit: Teo Hernández, Flyer of the projection of Foire du Trône at ciné-club Saint-Charles, París, 1982. Courtesy: Michel Nedjar

    Teo Hernández: Shatter appear­ances is the result of a long-term cura­to­rial research around this film­maker’s work and archive. Between 1968 and 1991, he pro­duced approx­i­mately 160 films, ranging in time and for­mats (8mm, Super-8 and 16mm). The exhi­bi­tion includes mate­rials not only from his per­sonal archive, but also from his close col­lab­o­ra­tors, friends and rel­a­tives. Centered around three themes (The Self Filmed, Bodily Vertigo; Intimate City), the goal is to empha­size his rad­ical inten­tion to pro­duce a tac­tile cinema informed by per­forming arts and con­tem­po­rary dance, in order to to invoke future bodies and real­i­ties. This pro­ject does not pro­pose a canon­ical inter­pre­ta­tion of his work, but rather offers the expe­ri­ence of some of Hernández’s con­cerns, obses­sions, and desires cir­cling iden­tity, the body and the city.

    Download the press release