The Rubbery

‘The Rubbery’ reflects the eclectic attitude in Hervàs’ artistic work in which the final result is the outcome of a process of research, observation, aggregation and subversion of (cultural) material Antoni finds himself at work with at that moment. The process towards this show entailed the mining of subject matter such as male roller-derby contests, the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts and a fifties gay motorcycle club that engages in the practice of fistfucking while distributing underground photocopied zines containing instructions on protection, drawings of Tom of Finland and personal stories. These divergent topics are linked by his interest in defying attitudes towards the powers of society regulate the human body.

Drawing is for him the means to jot down notes of his discoveries, to reflect on them and to transform them anew in a process that he would describe as ‘liquid’. He takes advantage of the transformative power of the expanded method of drawing and installation for a larger study, rummaging the discarded edges of cultures, like the folkloristic and vernacular expressions of a particular context.

The final physical result could be seen as a digestion of his initial research, where the sculptures, video, and drawings take on an autonomous form of their own. They themselves turn into entities that defy authoritative conventions of representation, as in the end the work resists any fixed interpretation.