Jesus Hernandez

Digital Art; This is Not Art, 2024

Digital Art is a short film that broaches art in the digital age and the elusivity of art creation, art criticism, and art consumption. The film incorporates archival footage of media from past traditional sources of content alongside a slurry of randomized footage of content from various videos uploaded to the internet, largely platforms like YouTube. The piece is an onslaught of content, media, visuality and, best of all, it is not an art piece nor a statement. It is art agnostic and pretentious, paying reverence to all art before, now, and to come. 

Digital Lamb, 2024

Digital Lamb is a sculpture created through a collage of computer components, cables, circuitry, and a multitude of other pieces of digital fragments. Digital Lamb explores the process of degradation of our technology, using a collection of scrapped and items deemed unusable by local computer repair shop Dave's Computer Repair, whose generosity has made this work possible. Digital repurposing and recycling of elements is at the forefront of the process of creation. The piece challenges the viewer to assume responsibility for their own relationships with technology, the passive participant role that it plays while people expect a level of utility that which is only of use until it's inevitable expiration. The "innocence" presented in this relationship is likened to a lamb. Bestowed upon the lamb is also a crown of barbed wire. 

Caravaggio Digitali, 2024

Caravaggio Digitali is a painted piece created out of the recontextualization and repurposing of a computer motherboard which was unusable. The piece harkens back to the classic work of Caravaggio and stands as an interpretation of his work entitled The Crowning with Thorns; a piece that depicts the crown of thorns being placed upon Christ as he faced crucifixion as a method of mockery. Caravaggio's piece is in and of itself an interpretation of a prior work by Paul Rubens and as such, this reinterpretation of Caravaggio's work is an attempt to follow upon those processes of artistic transmutation in a contemporary period. 

About the Artist

Everything that I create is based on a feeling. I am always trying to replicate a feeling that I’ve felt and that I haven’t been able to find since then. I’m unsure of what this exactly means and I feel as though that is precisely what my artist practice is about. I don’t know if I’d consider myself an artist and the word “creative” sounds a bit pompous, but I do like to make things. Whether it is a cathartic release or an intent to create work that resonates, that is always a subconscious decision that I need not scrutinize. It’s a lot like fumbling your way through the dark and tripping over yourself, and sometimes you figure it out and other times you don’t. I create for myself but the world around us is always watching. I am viewed within the panopticon. I’m surrounded by eyes and I’m viewed from every angle. To be an artist is to submit yourself to anyone and everyone’s perception. To be naked down to the bone. And so, I create art for myself, but it’s always for everyone else and that defines my work, for better or for worse. Creating art has been a constant for me throughout my life as a source for self-expression and catharsis. The older that I get, the more I feel as though being sincere and vulnerable is an invaluable asset in the world.