I am nothing

Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany

2016

curated by Susanne Weiss
The protagonist of Patrick Modiano’s novel Missing Person fears being a man whose footsteps leave a trace that lasts only for a few seconds. “I am nothing” are the words the narrator uses to start his story.

For his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany at the Studio of the Heidelberger Kunstverein, Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernández looks back at Figure 1, a sculpture he made in 2013 that has traveled to different locations and been presented in various contexts. For this occasion, Hernández has conducted the sculpture through a multi-layered narrative, putting it in dialogue with a network of objects and images produced for the exhibition.

The space created to host Figure 1 is an installation that draws inspiration from both the work of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico and a collection of documents and artifacts from the first Soviet space missions, shown in the exhibition Space: the Birth of a New Era at Pavilion No. 1 of VDNH in Moscow.