Diango Hernandez
9783954760855
168 pages
Distanz Verlag Gmbh Llc
Overview
Experimental setups exploring the possibility of historical insight. In the mind of the CubanGerman artist Diango Hernandez (b. Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, 1970; lives and works in Dusseldorf), the bipolar global order of the Cold War is not yet a thing of the past. The defining conflict of the era that ended in 1989 continues to inspire Hernandez's work. "Socialist Nature" is the title the artist has chosen for his "homage to Eugene von Gundlach." Who is this renowned but fictional photographer who traveled the countries of the former Eastern Bloc trying to prove that the power of the socilast utopia affected and tranformed not just their people but also their flora and fauna? Hernandez's work charts a treacherous path balancing the fine and increasingly blurry line between utopia and reality. He resorts to the devices of meticulous documentation to create a deceptive semblance of authenticity, challenging us to think critically and sending us on a voyage of discovery. The book illustrates a more recent phase in Diango Hernandez's oeuvre in which the motifs and themes appear to be more playful and easily accessible. Upon closer inspection, however, it is clear that his art is still animated by his urge to keep writing his subjective and critical counternarrative against the master narrative of the Cuban revolution.
