Diango Hernandez
Losing you Tonight
04 Oct 2009 - 05 Apr 2010
The 2009 Rubens Young Artists Award of the City of Siegen
“I would like to play with the word 'art'. It is my aim to seduce people and show them ideas so that they realise how terrible those ideas can be – even when they are truly beautiful.” (Diango Hernández)
On 4th October 2009, the City of Siegen will be presenting the 6th Rubens Young Artists Award to concept artist Diango Hernández, who was born on Cuba in 1970 and now lives in Düsseldorf. The Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen is using this opportunity to show a comprehensive presentation of his work. The survey exhibition will include works from recent years as well as new pieces such as an installation especially conceived for this occasion.
Geography and politics have shaped Diango Hernández’s experiences between worlds. Adopting a disaffected perspective, he places his autobiographical experiences within a communist system facing economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineties. This background has led him to develop a certain sensitivity, interpreting reality as something caught in varying stages of decay. Fragments of this reality represent an inexhaustible store from which the artist creates melancholy, but also situationist and surrealist poetry.
Installations, assemblages of furniture, large collections of drawings, and conglomerations of artefacts and memorabilia form a universal system of reference. Multiple remains of communication systems and apparatus such as antenna, telegraph posts, school desks or record players are pointers to indoctrination, to one-way messages leading into a vacuum but never missing their mark, to communication as the foundation of education into a member of the collective.
Hernández’s playful poetic standpoint places its faith in improvisation and the contingent discovery of constellations. In this way, he develops a personal iconography which operates using public images and reflects social imprinting. Ultimately, Hernández suggests a culture of the provisional; the dreaming individual standing on ideology’s ruins.
“I would like to play with the word 'art'. It is my aim to seduce people and show them ideas so that they realise how terrible those ideas can be – even when they are truly beautiful.” (Diango Hernández)
On 4th October 2009, the City of Siegen will be presenting the 6th Rubens Young Artists Award to concept artist Diango Hernández, who was born on Cuba in 1970 and now lives in Düsseldorf. The Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen is using this opportunity to show a comprehensive presentation of his work. The survey exhibition will include works from recent years as well as new pieces such as an installation especially conceived for this occasion.
Geography and politics have shaped Diango Hernández’s experiences between worlds. Adopting a disaffected perspective, he places his autobiographical experiences within a communist system facing economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineties. This background has led him to develop a certain sensitivity, interpreting reality as something caught in varying stages of decay. Fragments of this reality represent an inexhaustible store from which the artist creates melancholy, but also situationist and surrealist poetry.
Installations, assemblages of furniture, large collections of drawings, and conglomerations of artefacts and memorabilia form a universal system of reference. Multiple remains of communication systems and apparatus such as antenna, telegraph posts, school desks or record players are pointers to indoctrination, to one-way messages leading into a vacuum but never missing their mark, to communication as the foundation of education into a member of the collective.
Hernández’s playful poetic standpoint places its faith in improvisation and the contingent discovery of constellations. In this way, he develops a personal iconography which operates using public images and reflects social imprinting. Ultimately, Hernández suggests a culture of the provisional; the dreaming individual standing on ideology’s ruins.