London’s Frieze Sculpture, one of the most important contemporary art fairs held around the world – around 150 art galleries from all continents participate, and in addition to the purely exhibitional programme there are parallel programmes of promotional, training and dissemination activities – has chosen this year Ávila-born Albano Hernández as one of the very few international artists invited to this event, in which no more than 27 ‘foreigners’ are selected for the quality and originality of their work.
Albano, who last June had the honour of being invited to exhibit one of his works at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition – an annual event that has been held since 1769 and is the largest and most popular exhibition in the United Kingdom – thus takes over from other great Spanish artists such as Plensa and Barceló at Frieze Sculpture in London.
For this major exhibition, which opens from 17 September to 27 October, the artist from Ávila has presented a work entitled The Shadow, an idea that he materialises through a shadow painted on the grass of the legendary Regent’s Park, which “overflows genres and techniques, emerging as a hybrid of sculpture and painting, which demonstrates the author’s ecological awareness and his commitment to the zero waste movement”, according to the organisers of Frieze Sculpture.
With this work, which the artist himself considers to be “from an artistic point of view one of the most relevant or prestigious works I have done to date,” Albano explains that he has created “a sculpture with playful echoes of English gardens, which does not rise above the surface or pierce it, but rather, delving into the conceptual, privileges a mythical and mystical gaze.”
To execute the piece, consistent with the idea of environmentalism that encourages it, non-toxic material is used to fix the shade of the sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) on the grass, a species documented and brought to Europe by Francisco Hernández de Toledo in the 16th century, during the reign of Philip II, a detail that gives a little more Spanish prominence to the artistic proposal.
nature and symbol. As regards the meaning of the work, he adds, “its conceptual process highlights the non-human protagonists of the English garden”, and also “establishes associations of ideas between the natural and the symbolic, highlighting the relevance of shadows in the History of Art –from the myth of Plato’s cave– which structure this work in a poetic key, respecting the environment, making light and shadow, illusion and reality, organic and industrial materials dialogue”.
According to Lucian Blaga in Piedras del tiempo, “it is true that shadows resemble darkness, but they are daughters of light”, the organisers of Frieze Sculpture argue that “this The Shadow expresses a message of light through its green shadow, about another age of green, a hallmark of Albanian work”. That is, they add, that this work is touched by “several autobiographical winks – the Verdalban one! – and revealing its commitment to nature, involving it in art, exhibiting the splendour of its present and good omens for its future”.
With more than twenty editions behind it, this fair has established itself as one of the essential events for international collectors, turning the British capital into the epicentre of global art during the start of the season. It is a date marked in red in the exhibition programme of the galleries, in which the auction houses present their best lots with satellite events and fairs, and it is not easy to stand out among all that hustle and bustle in which there are so many participants, a difficulty that Albano Hernández has overcome with the endorsement of his excellent work, becoming the fourth Spanish artist selected for Frieze Sculpture, after Joan Miró (2013), Jaume Plensa (2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019), and Miquel Barceló (2017).
