Juan Hernández Díaz

When it Rains, it Pours, 2021
Dried duck heads, mercury thermometer, felted wool hat, eggshells, plastic net bag, wooden crutch, iron cast hook, jute rope, core sample, iron beam, Morton salt, rusty iron basket, rusty metal wires, neon gaffer tape.
11 x 12 x 7 feet

Juan Hernández Díaz’s current projects look at how objects interrelate as a precariously balanced system on the border of collapse. This diptych of weighing scales puts found objects in relation and creates a system of values in which the physical and the metaphorical weight collide.

These structures find their end when the system collapses. At this juncture, the accident becomes a strategy to let the objects get out of the artist's control and let hazard establish their new associations. It is also the opportunity to record the event through a floor drawing, a piece of evidence that announces that an accident has happened and that a new one could happen.

Juan Hernández Díaz transforms found objects to contradict their conventional function and create contradictory and unfamiliar images. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, and writing, he invites the viewer to get into the room of his imagination and experience an unusual internal logic that presents tensions between the ordinary and the strange.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Hernández Díaz studied architecture at the Universidad de Los Andes, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. He is currently undertaking an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts. He lives and works in New York City.