Frieze Los Angeles Booth F11

“The only true voyage… would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes… to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.”

– Marcel Proust, The Captive / The Fugitive

For this two-part exhibition taking place at Bel Ami and Frieze Los Angeles, Rodrigo Hernández builds minimal dreamlike environments, each with just one painting, one sculpture and a site-specific pedestal display. In different ways, the art objects and platforms set the stage for an unexpected encounter with something both familiar and strange. Pedestals, low to the ground, resemble platform beds, supported by L-shaped plywood headboards. They are not for resting. Rather, they ask if in some sense we are already asleep, wandering through a waking dream. Upon each platform, a bronze sculpture of a human head rests on its side, reminiscent of Constantin Brâncusi’s ovoid Sleeping Muse, but here the representation is hollow, a vessel hoping to be filled.

On an adjacent wall, a small painting of an urban landscape is also turned on its side, rotated to a vertical orientation. Over this steep horizon, an image of a butterfly in repose; we can only hypothesize about its relationship to the city backdrop. On second glance, we realize the composition reflects a human point of view; we know that butterflies perceive a much wider palette, including ultra-violet and that they possess an inner magnetic feeling that allows them to navigate long distances and target extremely specific locations. A precise rendering, the painting retains a graphic, illustrative quality not unlike René Magritte, as if to remind us that this is not a window unto the world, only a picture… and yet perhaps a little more than that.

Rodrigo Hernández (Mexico City, Mexico, 1983) currently lives and works between Lisbon and Mexico City.