Cascadas is Hernández first solo exhibition at Casado Santapau. This new exhibition is based on two new bodies of works; in which Hernández explores new strategies of transformation of Cuba’s recent history. In Cascadas Hernández’s country history appears as something unreadable therefore more open and universal.
Since leaving Cuba in 2003, Diango Hernández has been actively addressing and reflecting on his country of origin, often pointing the ways in which the socialist ideology denies or promotes an aesthetic or spiritual experience.
The first body of work in Cascadas (6 large format paintings) lends its name to the exhibition. These 6 paintings are based entirely on texts. Hernández has created and designed a typeface in which each letter is a ‘wave’, this typeface has becomes the protagonist element that transform words and blocks of texts into ‘sea’.
All texts used in Cascadas were taken from a 1980 Fidel Castro’s speech. This speech given in May 1980 in Havana, Cuba was particularly important in regard to the Cuban exodus known as ‘El Mariel’. The most notable feature of Hernández’s typography is that each of the characters has the same design. This means that the narrative as well as the artworks are transformed into repetitive images that can’t be “read”, except in pictorial terms.
The second body of works in Cascadas are 5 sculptures, 4 wall sculptures and one standing sculpture. The waves in the sculptures are used in the same way than in the paintings, they are ‘translations’ in this case of single words. The wall sculptures are the flags (colors and names) of 4 Caribbean countries and the standing sculpture is the repetition of two words SEA and SUN.
Diango Hernández was born in 1970 in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba now leaves between Düsseldorf, Germany and Havana, Cuba. His work has been included in many group international exhibitions such as MOMA in NY, Hayward Gallery in London, it has been presented at the 2005 Venice Biennial, the 2006 Biennale in São Paulo as well as Sidney, and the biennial of Liverpool 2006.
Casau