Cuban artist Diango Hernandez was born in Sancti Spíritus and currently lives and works between Düsseldorf and Havana. A founding member of the Cuban artistic duo Ordo Amoris Cabinet, he was was awarded with prestigious The Rubens Award for his outstanding contribution to the field of art in 2009. He’s had numerous solo exhibitions as well as collaborations and is currently exhibiting his latest works at Italy’s Wizard Gallery.
While Hernandez has several different styles of work, it’s his oil paintings that look as though they are filtered through textured glass on which we are focusing. In these artworks, the subjects appear blurred or refracted, lacking detail and precision, but imbued with movement. Their edges dissipating as if floating away.
A practice he calls “Olaísmo” the artist says “Waves are the language of the sea. A language that can be used for painting, for creating images of a more fluid world, a world without rigidity a liquid world.”
Olaismo: (as per Wizard Gallery)
The common denominator that unites this whole series of new paintings is the presence of a semitransparent element that stands between the artist and his reality, transforming that reality – what the artist sees – into an imprecise and blurred image, but extraordinarily rich in visual textures.
Seen as though through a watery veil, these paintings of people and places have a sense of quiet and yet they draw you in, teasing you as if they will soon fully reveal themselves.
“I love the extreme solitude of creation, and at the same time, I also love how meaningful and powerful breaking that silence is.” — Diango Hernandez, Düsseldorf, Germany and Havana, Cuba
The artist manages to create a luminosity with texture sometimes so strong, it resembles finger-paintings.
I was born near the seaside, it took me years to understand and value that entire experience. Years ago when I did my first wave drawings I felt somehow “arrived”, at that point I reached what I so much searched for “my completeness”. The beautiful mornings by the sea, diving inside corals and crystal clear waters seeing fish that were so beautiful and peaceful, those days as a young boy I was truly happy, somehow complete.” – Diango Hernández, Cuban, b. 1970
