Hernan Cedola at the Chelsear Art Museum and Pinta New York

The group exhibition Abstraction Revisited included pieces from Chilean pioneer of the abstract expressionism, Roberto Matta, and other renowned figures such as Robert Motherwell, or Larry Poons, among contemporary emergent artist such as Gerar Mosse or Stephen Ellis, and Vicky Ustle. Cedola was the only Latino American included in the show.

The curator Elga Wimmer precises that the works of various contemporary artists engaged in abstraction, alongside examples from some of the first-generation masters of Abstract

Expressionism were chosen for their visual impact and the strong dialogue between generations.

“This juxtaposition seeks to shed light on the parallels and differences within a practice which shows no sign of fading, indeed which is more vital and innovative than ever, as evidenced by a surge of interest from artists, critics and art lovers alike. While the younger artists acknowledge their illustrious predecessors, they are less doctrinaire, willing to mix genres and media, from painting and sculpture to photography, video and film. They demonstrate their independence and individuality within an idiom which remains as vital today as it was when artists first sought freedom from representation”, said Wimer.

Regardin Cedola’s work the curator Leandro de Martinelli wrote the following text:

Rythm & Blues

Conclusions are scary confronted to this series of Hernán Cédola´s oils pastels. The search for a referent point, the starting end to pull and unweave the hank of feelings is everywhere and nowhere.

It is a thready, but at the same time enlightened piece with overlapping suture stitches that achieve a crust of cheating shades. There we find the dark greyish brown of rolling organic matter rabidly dressed up in fun colours, or better, in colours with a fake smile; and that is the fundamental sensation: a framework of light that intends to hide a dark wound, but that by no means can.

There is a mixture of childhood labour and action painting, of automatism and immediate decision making but forced to communicate something beyond speedy and energy. It is rhythm that outstands in this piece, as if sweat and primal gesture were elements to serve the tempo in which each stroke was performed. It becomes strong although rhythm is an attached element of this Argentinean artist's work.

Curiously there is not one awkward centimetre in these drawings and this works as a warning. Here is the effect of the mind over the paper, performed with unrestraint and brutal force, and them wickedly dressed in beauty. But the series also informs that unrestraint is not only a will, that overflow itself (doing without thinking about the consequences) but also it can be recreated with precision, because restraint is not the central theme of this work, but it is another resource that hides many things, which anyway shows their heads behind a seam of colours. And that is the warning, the game where simplicity, fake naïveté, knows how to speak to not only to the more aware spectators but also to the sleepy ones.