Parole / Words, Diango Hernández’s eighth solo exhibition at Wizard Gallery in Milan, returns to the original idea at the heart of Olaismo: the translation of words into the language of the sea. Bringing together recent paintings and, for the first time, a series of Carrara marble sculptures, the exhibition explores how language takes on new forms when written meaning becomes wave, image and matter.
Developed by Hernández since 2015, Olaismo emerges from the possibility of translating through waves. The sea provides a language of movement, repetition and endless variation, through which words acquire another rhythm and another way of being understood. In this process, reading becomes an encounter with form, colour and space. Meaning moves beyond the familiarity of letters, opening itself to perception, memory and emotion.
The title Parole / Words places this act of translation at the centre of the exhibition. Across canvas and marble, Hernández explores what happens to a word when its written form changes: what remains, what becomes visible and what can be felt before it can be deciphered. Each work offers a passage between verbal language and sensory experience.
At the centre of the exhibition is the large-scale Olaista painting Ventana y lectora / Window and Reader. A young woman reads quietly on her bed, while the scene reaches the viewer through undulating forms, as though seen through rippled glass or beneath the surface of water. Her act of reading echoes the viewer’s own encounter with the painting: both inhabit a space in which signs become images and images generate meaning.
The work belongs to Hernández’s Window series, developed over the past five years. Its starting point is the stairwell window of his Düsseldorf home, seen from inside his apartment through the corrugated glass of the door. This everyday experience gives translation an optical dimension. As the glass alters the scene, familiar forms become fluid, allowing the visible world to enter the language of Olaísmo. The window becomes a threshold between different ways of seeing and understanding.
In the Carrara marble sculptures, this process acquires volume and weight. Words translated into Olaismo leave the written surface and occupy physical space. Their wave forms hold the suggestion of movement within stone, giving language a presence that can be approached and experienced from different viewpoints. The sea’s rhythms become still, yet retain their capacity to carry meaning.
Born in Cuba and based in Europe since 2003, Hernández brings painting, sculpture, writing and reading into a shared exploration of translation. Parole / Words invites viewers to encounter the sea as a language through which words, images and experiences can be understood anew.
The exhibition also inaugurates Wizard Gallery’s new Milan premises, a completely renovated venue featuring a large exhibition hall, offices and an exceptional courtyard.
WIZARD
Via Petrarca 5
20123 Milan, Italy
milan@wizardgallery.com
www.wizardgallery.com
