Hector Mata Studio

Radicant

Radicant is a word from the botanical world that describes a plant that takes root on, or above, the ground, rooting from the stem. French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud uses the analogy to describe a new type of artist, a person that roots in every place he lives in.

Museo de la Memoria

An 18 channels video installation commissioned by the Museum LUM (Lugar de la Memoria, La Tolerancia y la Inclusion Social) that opens in Lima, Peru on October/November 2015.

Urban Landscapes

Looking at the world through his globalized prism of art the artist comes from one place but even though he or she recognize his or her origins, the artist develops new languages to describe the world.

Americanos

America's portrait by Hector Mata is rooted in the documentary tradition of a generation of photographers that found its reference in Robert Frank's seminal book "The Americans".

L.A.tinos

Hector Mata's series made between 1998-2002 in the city of Los Angeles, California.

Limbo

Hector Mata, Photographer, became the witness of the illegal immigration that crosses the border between the US and Mexico.

Real Dolls

With each passing year, Barbie, the famous doll adult woman with attributes, is closer to 60.

Separacion

Roxana Artacho and Hector Mata’s installation “Separacion” (“Separation”) is oriented towards a reconciliation between the idea and the craft, in this case, within the realm of two different arts

Hector Mata Studio

The American photographer Hector Mata has evolved a potent approach to both conceptual photography and video during the last decade. This has given a striking, thought-provoking turn to his recent work in the visual arts, in which he addresses contemporary issues.

If before, when he was in his twenties, his stance was that of a trueblood photojournalist, he has developed a fine visual proposal, partly based on a quest for information that converses with both the research aspects and the empathy of the individual engaging in photojournalism; and partly, on the ethos of contemporary visual narratives. Through the use of subtle conceptual filters, Mata puts the accent on the displacement of the experience of the real, in the construction of his photographic images, and introduces framing devices to channel emotion. In video, Mata has fused his penchant for the construction of meaning through the carefully-structured visuality of the images and the expressive generation of rhythm through editing, with a stark viewpoint on objects and individuals that reveals his understanding of the man in the street as an actor in everyday life: one whose destiny can change dramatically in the heat of the moment but who is also known to rise to the situation and transform the commonplace by the sheer impulse to reject all the givens. The characters in his video narratives, more often than not are heroes without the heroics the public wants to see; and it is interesting to consider that Mata, for one, does not appear to be interested in portraying self-invented and promoted anti-heroes.

In his recent work, Mata is exploring the experience of the moving image from the perspective of the viewer, inducing the participant into an hypnotic trance. The world described in recent videos show us what it appears to be urban landscapes in perpetual motion. A dirty, abstract view of cities in their constant transformation. The use of sound that he carefully design accelerates the sense of fluidity and the non permanence of matter. Reality as we perceive it, is gone. A new reality replaces it.