The Long Pond

Artists

Rodrigo Hernández

Press release

ChertLüdde is pleased to present The Long Pond, the third solo exhibition by Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernández at the gallery. In his new installation, Hernández pauses time, unfolding an intimate moment of conscious reflection and queer desire. Working across drawing, painting, relief, sculpture, and installation, Rodrigo Hernández (b. 1983, Mexico City) assembles carefully composed image constellations that probe perspective and perception, with his recent exhibitions venturing into speculative dream worlds beyond just the human. With The Long Pond, Hernández turns inward, toward more conscious forms of dreaming—those of desire and longing—creating a loose visual narrative that exists in the void between sleep and full alertness. As one of his most biographical projects in recent years, the installation is centered around two bronze-cast heads that float above the floor on a large grey platform. The figures, lovers locked in one another’s gaze, appear caught in a state of conscious dreaming, still enveloped by the fog of sleep. These heads mirror each other, one ear resting gently on a hand. Fragments from the artist’s own life begin to surface on the walls around them; drawings of a trip to Maine with his partner before Hernández moved overseas and glimpses of his current life in Paris. These moments suspend the exhibition in a liminal space shaped by memory, intimacy, and change. As the installation moves from three-dimensional forms into two-dimensional images, gestures such as a hand touching a lily or holding a snail emerge from a short text written by the artist. Evoking distance between two people, two moments, and two states of consciousness, the exhibition frames time as a deeply personal, subjective experience, untethered from fixed social or cultural structures. Rodrigo Hernández (1983, Mexico City, Mexico) lives and works in Mexico City and Paris. He studied at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht after obtaining a BA at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. Working mostly with classical media and techniques of art making, including drawing, sculpture, engraving and painting, Hernández is interested in the constitutive movement of art and image making, from Meso-American iconography to contemporary art. Selected solo exhibitions include: Tanya Bonakdar, New York (2025); Antenna Space, Shanghai (2024); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2023); Künstlerhaus, Bremen (2023); Pakt, Amsterdam (2023); Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2023); Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2022); Swiss Institute Offsite, New York (2022); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Medellin (2022); Kunsthalle Kohta, Helsinki (2021); Culturgest, Lisbon (2021); Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (2021); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2020); Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City (2019); Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur (2019); Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2019); Pivô, São Paulo (2018); Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga (2017); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberger (2016); Museo del Chopo, Mexico City (2015); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2014). Selected group exhibitions include: Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2025); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2025, 2017); Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto (2024); Kunsthalle Münster, Münster (2024); Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Den Haag (2024); 12th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Gothenburg (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey, Monterrey (2022); Pinchuk Art Center, Kyiv (2019); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2017); Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg (2017).