Originally, Rodrigo Hernández studied history and philosophy, but art called and he went to an academy in Mexico, an academy in the German town of Karlsruhe and the Van Eyck Academy, respectively. Last summer, he left Maastricht for a working period to Basel, invited by the Laurenz-Haus Stiftung. There he has continued studying Dadaism and Surrealism. The lively anarchism and liberating passion for experiment involved in these historic movements are a continual source of inspiration to him.
The striking focal point in the atmospheric yet unfathomable installation developed by Hernández for the Bonnefanten is a stylised human figure. Stripped of individual features, he appears to stand for 'the humane'. The relationship between this figure and the other parts of the installation is not immediately clear. The title of the installation, What is the moon?, seems to be an invitation to set the process of associative thinking in motion.
The crux of the...work is an indiscernible drawing, based on a yantra, which is dissolved around the exhibition space. A yantra is a geometrical composition that serves as a symbol for inner states of human consciousness. Hernández has constructed his installation around this unreachable position, like a sort of all-seeing eye, and it is only from the yantra that the work discloses its coherence. Hernández invites the viewers to set their sight in motion and to start puzzling.
The suggestion that this sort of imaginary movement creates new images is close to the train of thought of the Surrealist predecessors so avidly studied by Hernández. The work was prompted by a statement from the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte: "An object can make one think that there are other objects behind it". Incidentally, you can see an illustration of the yantra in the publication compiled by Hernández in collaboration with the graphic workshop of the Van Eyck Academy.
Entrada actualizada el el 24 dic de 2017
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