04/05/2024, 2:00 pm,

Artist talk with Rodrigo Hernández

, Kunsthalle Münster

At the beginning of the exhibition forms of the surrounding futures, a conversation between Rodrigo Hernández and Merle Radtke, director of Kunsthalle Münster, will take place in order to enable a deeper insight into Hernández‘ oeuvre.

It is the fragmentary, the gesture of introducing but not concluding that interests Rodrigo Hernández. He is a storyteller who aims to direct our gaze to the often overlooked and invites us to dream. His works stimulate the imagination, moving in the realm of the conceivable, the sketchy, the mysterious and the poetic.

With the oversized cat depicted in Flux of Things (Cat & Clock) (2023), he brings a figure into focus that normally seems to belong to a parallel world. Only rarely do we actually see a cat on its nocturnal forays; at most, it enters our consciousness as some part of the background noise. With his scenery Hernández admits us into this parallel world, in which the cat is no longer a mere support actor but rather a prominent protagonist. Particular attention seems to be placed on its face, its expressions. The outlined facial features tempt us to humanize the cat and make us want to participate in its (mental) world. The categories of the different worlds are dissolved, become permeable. Hernández invites us to step beyond the bounds of human experience and make way for an imaginative perception of the world.

Rodrigo Hernández (1983, Mexico City, Mexico) lives and works in Mexico City. He studied at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2014) and obtained a BA at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe in 2013. Hernández’ highly idiosyncratic visual vocabulary invites, in a similar manner as fiction, the suspension of belief and the adoption of imaginative perception. Each of his installations is constructed as a rebus of various sources, such as poetry, philosophy, narrative and dreams. Recent exhibitions of his work include: CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2023–2024), the 12th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2023); Künstlerhaus Bremen (2023); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2023); Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2022); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (2022); Culturgest, Porto (2021); Fidelidade Arte, Lisboa (2021); Istanbul Modern (2020); Pinchuk ArtCenter, Kyiv (2019); GaMec, Bergamo (2018); ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe Resonances (2017-2018); Nuremberg Art Association (2017); Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2016–2017); Gladstone Gallery, Brussels (2017); MendesWoodDM, Brussels (2017); 12th Biennial FEMSA Monterrey (2016); 5th Moscow Biennial of Young Art (2016), Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2016); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2015–2016)