Opening shots
Argentinian sculptor Hernán Álvarez Forn tells Janet Menzies how a childhood among horses and the discovery of raku has shaped his work
LIKE the British, the Argentinians are a horse people, and often horse people don’t really see their horses. We race them, or play polo, or ride across country. We feed and groom them, and try to avoid getting trodden on, but rarely do we stop and look at them. The moment you do notice your horse, its sheer physicality is overwhelming. Strong bones, sinews, massive muscles and athletic poise all make for an almost machine-like beauty.
This is what Argentinian sculptor Hernán Álvarez Forn captures. His works deconstruct the horse. At first glance we see a glossy coat and crested neck, but the whole is stripped back to reveal wire sinews, bones and hooves that have much in common with the War Horse puppets. The idea of the horse is shown at the same time as the workings of the body. Forn explains that he was able to create this unique view when he discovered the Japanese ceramic technique raku: “It is a medieval Japanese process for ceramics, probably invented around 1400. The word means peace and happiness. I didn’t come across it until I was 40.”
It was a game changer for Forn. “I had used wire to sculpt when I was 13 and it was all I had. Then, when I found raku, I went back to wire and used both materials to make horses and other subjects for my sculpture. I combined the ancient with the contemporary. Using the raku ceramic process, each horse or other subject has the weight and mass of the ancestral – and the wire gives it nerve and motion.”
Forn makes a connection between the process of his work and the subject: “Raku is a complex mixture in which the four elements – earth, fire, water and air – interconnect to make unique and unrepeatable pieces. It is an elaborate chemical process using heat and water, which produces different tones, textures and colours. It can be a metallic red, mother of pearl shimmer or a crackle effect. You put the pieces into a small oven heated at about 900°C, depending on the type of enamel. When the enamel is cooked and completely incandescent, it is removed from the oven and carefully placed, using iron pincers, in a container full of wood shavings. This produces an enormous amount of smoke, which is absorbed and forms part of the enamel.”
It is appropriate that there’s an overtone of blacksmithing, and Forn welcomes the technical difficulties involved. He believes: “Creativity and limits go together in my view. I often found myself with limitations because of a technique that I did not have in hand at the moment, or because I lacked tools or materials. But that’s the fascinating part of it, these limits stimulate creativity – so you invent a tool for a certain purpose or you use it in a different way. Sometimes being limited by the material I had in hand taught me to be able to use whatever I came across: wood, metal, scrap iron, ceramic or stone.”
Starting at such a young age, and initially self taught, it was inevitable that Forn would lack materials for his work but there was no shortage of the most important element of any artist’s creation – subject matter. Forn agrees: “Since my early age, I rode horses on the family estate. Each of us, brothers and cousins, had a horse in our care; we had to take care of them as well as the saddle and everything that had to do with it. Usually we went along with the ranch workers and helped with the cattle. When we could we used to ride for a week or so at a time, usually into the wild. It was common to watch a polo game in the countryside as well between our friends and the owners of other estates. This marked me deeply with the love of horses and wild animals.”
Eventually Forn was able to take painting classes and, later, ceramics and sculpture with Cecilia Lorenzo, finding his place in Argentina’s thriving contemporary art community. Along with two Argentinian fellow artists, Adriana Zaefferer and Florencia Fernández Alonso, Forn is exhibiting virtually in the Osborne Studio Gallery’s Three Argentine Visions. Zaefferer’s horses are on canvas,
Raku is a complex mixture in which the four elements interconnect to make unique pieces
while Alonso concentrates on the landscape; all three artists share a sense of expression that is rooted in Argentine traditions, not just of horses but being free.
Forn tries to express this feeling: “In every artistic activity there is a primary need for liberty. It is to be an individual who from his infancy shapes his creations and makes his own way as an artist in every gesture.”
Not forgetting, of course, to bring the horse on the journey.
Three Argentine Visions – featuring Hernán Álvarez Forn, Adriana Zaefferer and Florencia Fernández Alonso – is being held online by the Osborne Studio Gallery, 2 Motcomb Street, London SW1.
Visit it at: osg.uk.com