Diango Hernández. Desideri di luce. Rifrazioni. A cura di Andrea Dall’Asta SJ. Galleria e Museo San Fedele 4 April - 25 May 2024

At the Galleria della Fondazione Culturale San Fedele, on Thursday, April 4th, starting from 6:00 PM, the personal exhibition of the Cuban artist Diango Hernández will inaugurate. In Collaboration wih WIZARD GALLERY.

The exhibition unfolds as a singular installation with its guiding thread being light. The works—10 Cantos de Sirenas, 5 All Hands, some paintings on refraction, 3 sculptures, some polaroids, and a 16th-century crucifix—follow a narrative logic that relates light and desire. Thus, the sequence All Hands—which presents hands portrayed in search of light—has a wooden crucifix as its focal point, signifying that human existence is to be interpreted in the light of transcendence, of an absolute. In this case, of a man who is the "light of the world."

At the heart of the exhibition project, some oil paintings reveal luminous spaces filtered as if through windows with translucent and corrugated glass, whose frames take the form of a cross. Even though we do not precisely see those places that appear blurred and distant, we sense the quiet peace of a beyond, as if we were standing before the diaphragm of the undulating motion of a threshold to cross, of a watery veil to break through as we dive into that light. Thus, at the entrance of the Gallery, the presence of a sculpture alludes to a tree behind which is placed a backdrop of four large abstract canvases in shades of green and blue, reminiscent of the fluidity of wonderful marine depths (the artist is famous for his research into Olaism, the language of the sea), but also the spaces of a luminous garden whose tree branches are caressed by the wind. If we follow the biblical symbolism of the celestial Jerusalem, that sculpture may allude to the tree of life expressing the deepest desires inscribed in the human being to be fruitful, to heal from physical and moral illnesses, to put an end to the experience of pain. The exhibition continues with a small space entirely covered by some canvases of Cantos de Sirenas, painted in vivid red hues: here, we are invited to experience the immersive sensation of a suggestive "chromatic chapel." Finally, the exhibition is completed with a painting on the theme of the "threshold" placed in the San Fedele Museum and specially created for the occasion.

Galleria e Museo San Fedele. Via Hoepli 3/b - Milan