COLLECTION 5 THE MALE - A FASHION SPECIAL!

KALTBLUT: What do you want to say with your
art? What is your message?
HERNáN: I don’t like to talk about a specific
message. I don’t want to guide the audience. It is
just about playing with elements I find and trying to
make them work. Elements that are always familiar
for me and combine themselves generating a new
project or a new idea. I try to create an image that
is powerful not only aesthetically but also conceptually.
As I have pointed out before, sex, power,
domination and maybe a sociological approach
tend to appear somehow. Besides, I like how pieces
sometimes adopt different meanings in different
contexts.
KALTBLUT: Can you tell us about any of your
current or upcoming plans and projects?
HERNáN: Now I am working on a series of diagrams
and drawings related to the issue of work
and how society is reshaping itself after the decay
of the welfare system. In the late nineties, I had
began working with Power Point presentations
and clip-arts, making subtle interventions on those
graphics. By that time, I created a series of work
that somehow tried to question the way the “service
era” showed us the world. After the decline of
the service and the financial based economy, I find
there is a kind of recovery of manual activity and
the actual production of goods. A new focus on the
connection with the real, that I think can sound old
fashioned.
Those ideas make me think about new patterns
of connection, production of energy, social organisation,
etc. I am taking images from artistic representations
of workers, and making linear drawings
and icons with them. I am justlooking at the first
results. Actually, I plan to show them in Europe, in
the galleries that represent my work: Mirta Demare
in Rotterdam and Ivo Kamm in Zürich.
Besides, come September I‘ll be living in Berlin.
I will be working on my shows and attending some
doctoral seminars that deal with art interventions.
I would also like to present my book “Die Deutsche
Reihe” and maybe make a show with that series.
That would be great.
KALTBLUT: I travelled to Buenos Aires for the
first time early this year and I really love the city.
What are your favourite places there you‘d
recommend to check out?
HERNáN: Buenos Aires is a great city, I mean a
large scale city. It can be very chaotic, but you can
easily fall in love with it- just as you did. You can
find lots of interesting places, depending on what
you’re looking for. I would recommend to immerse
yourself in the different atmospheres that every
“barrio” has: Palermo (a city itself), San Telmo,
Retiro, the Downtown Area.
Buenos Aires is a city of immigrants. Europeans
that came in the late XIX Century, and new waves
of immigrants coming from Latin America and Asia
that are arriving now. Even people from Africa.
Those processes are very visible in architecture as
well as in the people you see on the street. I would
recommend walking around the city as much as
possible. I assure you, you will always find a nice
bar or restaurant open at anytime in any place.
224
“I don’t want to
guide the audience.
It is just about
playing with
elements I
find and trying
to make them
work.“
“Clavadistas” (divers). Painted wood. Dimensions variable. 2007.