Press Release
Contemporary Painting Meets Video Game Graphics
The RESET Series by Dan Hernandez
Dan Hernandez’s RESET series combines traditional influences with modern motifs to create a novel venture into contemporary painting. RESET alternates between the narrative and the abstract, two distinctly different but complementary artistic styles. They are two sides of the same coin, yin, and yang, set and reset. Contact our gallery to learn more about his works and our other artists.
Narrative Works
His four newest narrative works in the RESET series draw from diverse influences, including early Christian painting and illuminations, medieval maps, Islamic art, and Indian miniatures. Dan Hernandez employed two distinct philosophies commonly used in video games. The first is an “open-world” or “sandbox” philosophy where the player (or viewer) has complete freedom to explore within the boundaries of the provided world. While these games often include narratives, it is up to the player to follow or not follow the narrative in the order they feel fits. The second philosophy is a more linear approach where the player (or viewer) has some autonomy in how they move through the world but ultimately must follow a predetermined path.
These recent works by Dan Hernandez draw from role-playing video games (RPGs) like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Pokemon. They are also a nod to arcade button-mashers like Gauntlet and to early maze-based games like Pac-Man, Maze Craze, or Adventure. The Sims is another important influence.
Abstract Works
The three more abstract contemporary paintings in the RESET series are less grounded and “toy box” like in nature. A toy box holds items that are used to create imaginary worlds mixed freely together without regard to narrative structure or context. In these works, Dan Hernandez utilizes fragments of imagery from art history, video games, and cartoons and piles them together in non-narrative compositions. Thus, these works’ order is more intuitive and draws on an internal sense of design. The source materials include objects and characters from cartoons like He-Man, She-Ra, Blackstar, and Conan the Adventurer, as well as from side scrollers, beat-em-up games, competitive fighting games, and RPGs. They also include imagery from similar art historical references seen in his narrative works.
Artist Biography
Dan Hernandez was awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2011 and 2015. He also received the 1st Prize at the Annual Chautauqua Exhibit of Contemporary Art in 2013 and 2010. His work has been written about and reproduced in publications in France, Germany, England, Israel, Austria, and the US, including in ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Spiegel Online, Gizmodo, and Arte Fuse.
His contemporary paintings were included in “Game Changers” at Boston’s MassArt Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition in February 2020, as well as at Beit Ha’ir Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel “Immersion,” Southern Ohio Museum’s “Fast Forward to the Renaissance,” “Bad For You” by curator Beth Rudin DeWoody in London, Lehman College Art Gallery’s “Under the Influence: the Comics,” Westport Arts Center’s “Toy Stories” by curator Helen Klisser During.