Artist: Rodrigo Hernández
Exhibition title: The real world does not take flight
Venue: Pivô, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Date: September 1 – December 23, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Pivô, Sao Paulo
Note: Exhibition booklet can found here
Pivô is pleased to present The real world does not take flight in its Annual Exhibitions Programme. This is the first institutional solo exhibition in Brazil by Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernández and is the outcome of a two months residency at Pivô, where the artist developed papier-maché sculptures and an installation directly on the walls of the exhibition space.
The title is appropriated from the first verse of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “The real world”. Szymborska was a Nobel Prize in literature and her main subjects were daily life, history and nature articulated in a colloquial language of powerful poetic effect. Hernández takes inspiration from the relation between dream and reality suggested in the poem to create an immersive environment where geometric patterns painted on the walls relate to the sculptures hanging on them, so painted forms and tridimensional reliefs correspond to each other.
The artist departs from the singularity of the architecture of the exhibition space to create a large-scale wall painting based on geometric patterns used in fashion and 60-70’s Op art, covering the space with color gradients that generate an atmospheric environment. Papier-maché objects – between tridimensional paintings and wall sculptures – are presented in the areas of color transition. Hernández plays with geometric and organic shapes overlapping one another, puzzling the relations between “background” and “figure”. Transformation and regeneration are the main subjects of moth the mural and the sculptures.
Working mostly with classical medias and techniques of art making, including drawing, sculpture and painting, Hernández is interested in the constitutive movement of art and image making, from Meso-American iconography to contemporary art. His projects vary from object-making within a devoted studio practice to site-specific and research oriented projects. He draws on a number of aesthetic references, which range classical Japanese printmaking to fashion, and European modernism, among others, to develop a very personal formal vocabulary.
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, The Possibility, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché, acrylic paint, oil paint, 43x35x14,5 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, The Possibility, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché, acrylic paint, oil paint, 43x35x14,5 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, My head left the axis, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 32x42x49 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, Alive, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 56x81x21,5 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, Why this specific self?, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 42,5 x 43 x 20 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, Why this specific self?, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 42,5 x 43 x 20 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, We, too, can divide ourselves, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 47 x 43 x 9 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, De-trans-visibility, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 31×30,8×14,5 cm
Rodrigo Hernández, These cells, 2018, Cardboard, wood papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, Variable dimensions
Rodrigo Hernández, These cells, 2018, Cardboard, wood papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, Variable dimensions
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, The real world does not take flight, 2018, exhibition view, Pivô, Sao Paulo
Rodrigo Hernández, Elsewhere, 2018, Cardboard, papier mâché , acrylic paint, oil paint, 50x42x12cm
