"70% of the plants in the world are pollinated by bees. They are individually so small, but together, the basis of everything."
Jesu Moratiel was born in A Coruña in 1993, he graduated in Fine Arts from Complutense University, with honours in his Final Degree Project. He currently works and resides in Madrid and he is represented by MTArt Agency.
He is a multidisciplinary artist working with installation and sculpture, photocollage, painting and 3D animation. His eclecticism deepens the intrinsic characteristics of the materials in which he works: the conservationist and insulating nature of the resin as time capsules contrast with its transparency and brightness. As for the digital work, he is interested in its artificial and ephemeral aspects, lost in the archaeology of the network and the flatness of the pixel and LED screen.
The thematic bulk of his work revolves around four fundamental pillars: life (and as a consequence, death), sex as the original phenomenon of life, the influence of science and technology in contemporary society as well as the configuration of social relations. Moratiel explores the artistic and anthropological record of universal cultures, their myths and beliefs, to configure the origins of human concerns. These topics are proposed from a very personal point of view, marked by traumatic experiences such as the double separation of his parents and the premature death of a lover.
Jesu's main series reflects on the anthropocene and its environmental impact on nature and its communities. He uses amber pieces to encapsulate thousands of dead bees - the death of these essential communities in our ecosystem is a result of the pesticides used in agriculture and global warming. Far from being limited to the environmental problem that characterises our era - and in particular the catastrophe of bees -, Moratiel shares with Aristotle, Hume or Manderville the metaphor between apicultural and human societies to delve into concepts such as the loss of identity and the individuality in favour of a mass report or the dissolution of geopolitical borders. Not surprisingly, Jesu attached to these works a document in which he authorises the international scientific community to use them for research purposes, whether biological, chemical, technological.
All this, which he calls the science fiction of contemporary art, is configured under a series of aesthetic guidelines coded in his interest in nature and science, finding in his method a way to formally structure his work. His work can be seen in several private collections and foundations such as Artemizia Foundation, La Gaceta de Salamanca or the Caja Duero Foundation, and he has worked with several Spanish and international galleries such as Cerquone Projects (Madrid and Caracas), LA Studio (Madrid), or Gallery Red (Mallorca).