New York based artist Juan Hinojosa collects found objects from everywhere he passes by. A toy snake, a wooden bird, a Good Luck charm, fragments from advertisements and billboards—find their way into his intricate compositions, creating altogether layered sculptural assemblages and intricate two dimensional collages. In both dimensional and flat formats, Hinojosa’s vocabulary is grounded in Pop aesthetics with a tint of Surrealism. Through super vivid colors and elaborate graphic shapes he depicts imaginary worlds where extravagant shrines and hybrid flowery creatures become a convincing presence. When you get closer, you can most likely trace where they came from.
In his explosive and vibrant collages, Juan Hinojosa explores themes of desire and identity—riffing off pop culture iconography, dreaming on representation, and creating Cinderella’s out of any and all bits and bobs he comes across. Incorporating trash alongside conventional art materials and objects from high-end stores, Hinojosa calls the viewer into a treasure hunt around and across his layered compositional imagery.
Embracing the concept of the library as a laboratory, the Mandeville Gallery and the Schaffer Library at Union College annually present the Art Installation Series in an effort to shift the visual arts from a gallery setting into a public space.
Juan Hinojosa is the sixth featured artist in the Art Installation Series. Hinojosa finds inspiration from the glamour of fashion magazines, television, and the lifestyle associated with New York City, but he questions our desires to be part of this world. He collects discarded items such as magazines, advertisements, postcards, and toys to arrange and play with, as a painter might arrange color with paint.
Born and raised in Queens, New York, Juan Hinojosa is a multimedia artist specializing in collage—an artistic practice popularized by the major avant-garde movements, Cubism and Dada, that incorporates found objects, usually print forms including newspapers and photographs. Through this technique, Hinojosa explores the multi-faceted constructions of our contemporary entertainment: fashion, pop culture, TV, cinema, and advertisements of make-up, jewelry, and perfume. He merges highly circulated imagery with objects of our daily lives as New Yorkers: metro cards, food wrappers, dry-cleaning labels, flattened cans, and various brands of soft drinks, alcohol, household goods, and frozen foods.
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