(b. 1964 - Caracas, Venezuela) expresses the cross-cultural nature of contemporary art by framing pan-Western concepts with common objects found in commercial Venezuelan culture. In this photograph, the artist represents the 20th Century Czech author Franz Kafka by carefully stacking training shoes that are commonly purchased from street vendors in his native Caracas. This work is from a thematic series in which the artist similarly "spells out" other key Western thinkers like Karl Marx, David Hume, and Carl Jung. In these photographs, Hernandez-Diez exposes the tendency of Western cultures to objectify important or valued people, goods, and ideas with titles and logos, whether they are historical thinkers or athletic footwear. For Hernandez-Diez, symbols of Venezuelan street culture have as much identity and cultural presence as historical Western ideologues. This conceptual blending of such distinct cultural entities is enhanced by the commanding visual language of his large-scale art. His "Kafka" becomes a bold and colorful icon of South American street life while the urban fashion of Caracas recharacterizes one of Western literature's most important writers. The artist has exhibited his work in the United States, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. He currently lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. 2003.015