Diango Hernández
‘If I send you this’
Tuesday, September 6 – Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
www.alexanderandbonin.com
press release
An exhibition of new work by Diango Hernández titled, If I send you this, will open at
Alexander and Bonin on Tuesday, September 6th. For this exhibition the artist has
transformed the architecture of the first floor gallery to accommodate two site
specific installations.
In these installations the artist has re-imagined the geometric ‘cat eye’ of Gordon
Matta-Clark’s 1975 “Days End” as an escape from a space of restriction to a space
of freedom.
In the main gallery, Hernández is re-removing these shapes, 'exeunts' as he has
termed them, from the walls and repurposing them as the tables of an imagined
agency of international transit and transition. Each table is fitted with a centerpiece; a square Plexiglas container within which international stamps circulate
endlessly. By juxtaposing the ‘exeunt’ and signs of international correspondence, the
artist draws from his experience of the American Embassy in Cuba; a building
unused for its intended purpose since January 1961.
Visible from this bureaucratic space through a Plexiglass window is a reliquary; a
floor covered in carefully looped magnetic tape loomed over by yet another
'exeunt', this time cut from a large sheet of paper and lit from above by a neon
tube. The magnetic tape, mute without its accompanying audio device, reiterates
the barrier between audience and content, past and present. The motifs embodied
in the installations recur in collages, sculptures, letters, and paintings on view through
the first and second floor of the gallery.
Born in Cuba in 1970, Diango Hernández began his artistic practice as a co-founder
of Ordo Amoris Cabinet, a group of artists and designers who focused on invented
solutions for home design objects to compensate for a permanent shortage of
materials and goods. In 2005 and 2006, he exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney and
the São Paulo Biennial respectively and in 2007 his work was exhibited in the
Arsenale as part of the 51st Venice Biennale. His work has been the subject of
several one-person museum exhibitions: Kunsthalle, Basel (2006), Neuer Aachener
Kunstverein (2007) and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen (2009).
In November 2011, Hernández’ work will be the subject of a survey exhibition at
Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto in Italy.
For press inquiries please contact Rebecca Brickman at 212/367-7474 or
[email protected].
Installation: If I send you this
If a Tape with a Light, if Silence 2011
cut wallpaper, neon, metal, analog tape and Plexiglas
as installed:108 x 207 ¼ x 185 in/ 274.3 x 526.4 x 470 cm
Installation: If I send you this
If a Room, if a Wall, if a Face 2011
wood and metal in 4 parts
51 ¼ x 110 ¼ x 29 3/8
If a Room, if a Wall, if a Face (detail)
If a Letter in a Wall, if a Cut 2011
cut wall and five archival pigment prints on paper
as installed: 4 x 151 in/238.8 x 383.5 cm
If a Letter in a Wall, if a Cut (detail)
artist statement
Exeunt_
In 1967 my great-grandfather wrote in a letter to my grandmother:
If I would find a way to escape this country -and most important- if I would find a
place where we can live all your sisters and brothers together, would you like to
come with us?
In an earlier letter sent also to my grandmother in 1958, my great-grandfather
wrote:
…What all my life I thought it was my homeland, in the last years has become a
strange place but is not necessarily making me feel like a stranger.
I guess many people have done it already nevertheless I ask myself -what is that
thing that artists are restlessly looking for? My answers to this question are all
narrow-minded and fluctuate like the weather.. So one could say, I’ve never
been satisfied with any of my answers about this particular matter. Lately the
idea of ‘exiting the complexity of reality’ earned a bit of my consideration: it
might be the starting point of a good answer to the subject.
What Gordon Matta-Clark did in 1975 with his Day’s End artwork wasn’t a cut on
a building’s facade but instead the construction of the ‘exit’ I am referring to. For
many people, Day’s End was just a hole that could take their eyes from the inside
of a building to the outside and vice-versa. Some people talk about this
particular Matta-Clark cut as ‘the cat eye shape’; after I have geometrically and
metaphysically processed this particular shape I decided to call it: Exeunt.
Exeunt is the paradigm, which proves that I am not far away from a good
answer to my question. It’s also Exeunt as the highest expression that a shape
could achieve in terms of geometry and in terms of ideology. If I am not wrong
and I will get a good answer from the study of Exeunt, then my next question
would be - if what artists are looking for is ‘the exit’, where is this exit leading us
to? Of course I won’t dare to answer this second question before answering
the first one but yet I would say hypothetically that Exeunt is definitely not
leading us to a place.
The American Consulate in Havana, (built in 1953 by the architects, Harrison and
Abramovitz), is nowadays one of the most visited public buildings in Havana.
Hundreds of Cubans seeking an American visa queue every day in front of it;
entire families, couples, singles, old and young people, blacks, whites and
mulattoes all looking for the same: a ‘ticket’ to another place. A place that is not
that far, only 90 miles between one piece of land and the other. What would
normally take no longer than 45 minutes by plane, takes a lifetime to reach for
most of the people in those queues. I have myself queued in front of the same
building, listening to the desperation of strange people and hallucinating
because of their stories, longings and hopes.
After hours of waiting it is my turn to get inside the American Consulate. On my
way to the entrance I counted three guards; I crossed through the big gate that
separates Havana from the ‘American soil’ and to my disappointment, a guard
tells me that I must turn left and sit under a tent which has been built outside the
main building, especially set aside for those Cubans that have a visa
appointment. It meant that I couldn’t enter the main building; I was so curious
about its interiors and the smells I would find in the offices. The night before my
appointment I found myself fantasizing about how Havana would look from one
of the American Consulate windows.
I know that is impossible to ask my great-grandfather if he found that idyllic place
he was referring to in his letter: his answer would have contributed immensely to
my studies. Nevertheless instead I decided to ask my grandmother since she
joined him before he died. A month ago I called her; I dialed her number and
after couple of rings there was her voice saying, “Hello, is America speaking”. It
was only then I realized how stupid my question was. My great-grandfather
named his beloved daughter ‘America’; at least now a very large area of my
puzzle is almost completed.
Even if ‘Day’s End’ has been ‘erased’ long ago by the hunger of some NYC
urban planners, I swear I have seen here and there the same Exeunt, sometimes
even on the American Consulate’s facade in Havana.
Diango Hernández, Düsseldorf 2011
If a Hat on a Cut 2011
wood and laminated wood in two parts
overall: 17 ½ x 29 ½ x 15 ¼ in/44.5 x 75 x 38.7 cm
If a Desk, if a Rose 2011
wood and stamps
66 ¼ x 32 x 2 5/8 in/168.3 x 81.3 x 7 cm
If a Desk with Words, if a House 2011
wood, typewriter ribbon and plastic
125 x 25 5/8 x 18 ¾ in/317.5 x 65.4 x 47.6 cm
If (series) 2011
oil on paper mounted on board and linen
each: 16 1/2 x 13 1/2 in/42 x 34.5 cm