19.11 - 20.12.2026

Manos de hierro en guantes de terciopelo | Alan Hernández
Opening: 19 November, 5 - 8 PM, during Amsterdam Art Week
Location: No Man's Art Gallery, Bos en Lommerweg 88-90

There are forms of power that do not need to reveal themselves openly. They hide in the softness of a fabric, the gleam of a jewel, the delicacy of a flower, or the seemingly harmless appearance of an object. Sometimes beauty is a form of concealment, a way of drawing us closer to what unsettles us.

For his first solo exhibition at the gallery, Alan Hernández (Oaxaca, 1992) brings together new pieces and works from different stages of his practice, tracing a path through clothing, jewellery, sculpture and decoration. Shaped by his mother’s work as a seamstress and his father’s as a blacksmith, he moves between thread and welding torch, soft and hard materials.

The title alludes to camouflage and double meanings: the ability to wrap something harsh in a gentle appearance, to conceal hardness beneath a seductive surface. Here, that hardness is social as much as material. It is the authority attached to masculinity, and the codes that dictate how bodies should dress, desire and appear. Working from within those codes, Hernández answers with humour and excess, turning adornment into both disguise and defence. Jewellery becomes an object of desire and an amulet of protection; clothing transforms the body it covers. In Vendrá la muerte y tendrá tus ojos (2021), fabric, acrylic nails, wig, embroidery and feathers come together in a presence that is at once glamorous and ominous, seductive and haunted.

Hernández is interested in beauty not as the opposite of hardness, but as one of its possible masks. Within the textures, sheen and delicacy of his materials, something harsh, uncomfortable or disturbing may lie hidden. Like a spell that draws us in before revealing its nature, beauty invites us to look more closely, to let ourselves be seduced, and perhaps to discover what lies beneath its surface.

The strongest hands are those never shown bare, those that have learned to cover themselves in the softest gloves.

Alan Hernández (b.1992, MX) based in Oaxaca, Mexico is known for his self-referential work that contains a certain political charge and humor. He graduated in plastic and visual arts at the Benito Juárez autonomous university of Oaxaca, U.A.B.J.O and studied at the art faculties of the UNAM and the U.A.E.M. His production focuses on intricate textile and bead techniques that trace back to crafts from his region, which are transformed to installations and immersive scenographies. Through this, he explores concepts as the body, gender, race, sexuality and identity. His knowledge of the various textile crafts is inspired and enforced by his mother, who was a seamstress herself.