Stunned by | Diango Hernández's pools don't need bathers

Key points

• Artist : Diango Hernández, born in 1970 in Cuba, lives and works between Düsseldorf and Havana.

• Emblematic series : Piscinas Olaistas (2015–2025), conceptual swimming pools combining architecture, painting and sculpture.

• Central concept : Olaísmo – the art of the wave, a metaphor for memory, exile and movement.

• Style : hybrid, poetic and conceptual, where each element dialogues with water and light.

There are artists who paint waves. And then there is Diango Hernández, who thinks about them. Born in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, in 1970, living between Düsseldorf and Havana, he invented a liquid art, both conceptual and sensual, where memory is diluted in design and the swimming pool becomes a philosophical manifesto.

Life like a long movement of water

At Hernández's, nothing stays solid for very long.
His works move, breathe, and bend to the movement of the world. We find in them the vestiges of a Cuban childhood, the mirages of exile, and the echoes of past ideologies.
He calls it Olaísmo – from the Spanish word ola , wave.
A moving, floating art, which rejects the boundaries between sculpture, drawing and interior architecture.

“The movement of water flows through every element of the design.” – Diango Hernández

It's all there: fluidity as a philosophy, the wave as a state of mind.

Pools that think

His Piscinas Olaistas are not swimming pools. They are mental architectures, interior landscapes.
We don't swim in it—we slowly lose ourselves in it. The curves recall the movements of the sea, the surfaces capture the light like a thought on the surface of a dream.
Each work becomes a kind of emotional laboratory , a place of calm and astonishing reflection.

These pools are closer to literature than to concrete, closer to Virginia Woolf than to a holiday club. They speak of time, absence, intimacy.
And yet, there is nothing melancholic about them: they undulate, breathe, almost smile.

Between design, philosophy and memory

Diango Hernández transforms furniture into a message, drawing into a brain wave, shape into a memory.
Trained in Cuba in the 1990s, he co-founded Ordo Amoris Cabinet , a visionary collective that reclaimed everyday objects and made them speak differently. His unique talent quickly earned him international recognition: exhibitions at the Venice Biennale , the Hayward Gallery in London , the MoMA in New York , and the MART in Rovereto . In 2008, he received the Rubens-Förderpreis , recognizing his work as one of the most important of his generation.

But deep down, his real medal is this strange sensation that his work leaves: that of having been crossed by an idea without knowing which one.

Floating, again and again

Facing a Piscina Olaista, you don't know whether to dive in, meditate, or smile. Maybe all at once.
It is art in its liquid state: a mixture of intelligence, gentleness and vertigo.
And if Diango Hernández's pools don't need bathers, perhaps it's because they already bathe in our thoughts.

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FAQ

Are the Piscinas Olaistas functional?
No, they are works of art. They are designed to experience movement, light, and memory, not to bathe in.

Why “Olaism”?
The term comes from ola , wave in Spanish. It reflects the movement, fluidity and constant transformation that run through Hernández's life and art.

What is special about his work?
His work fuses conceptual art, design, and poetic installation. Each piece becomes an emotional, sensory, and intellectual space where the viewer is invited to float within the artist's thoughts.