The paintings of Secundino Hernández play with surface and depth. The artist is currently enjoying spectacular international attention and works with washing, scratching, and layering paint.

Secundino Hernández (b. 1975, Madrid) is a painter who revels in tensions between making and unmaking, construction and destruction. He describes his paintings as a metaphor for being human: our existence is a chain of fragmentary moments; a sequence of falls and rises, musings and random stumblings.

Hernández’s highly original style – resembling a visual diary of his process – is fraught with contrasts. From one series to the next, his works are rich in tensions between accident and control, minimalism and bold gesturalism. His seemingly spontaneous technique belies a debt to past generations of artists such as El Greco, Goya and Miró.

To produce his works, Hernández uses not only brushes, but also self-fashioned tools such as sharp metal points fixed to his tubes of paint and various paint removal devices.

The Kunsthalle Helsinki exhibition features a selection of new paintings as well as works spanning the past five years of his career.