Pepe Calderin

Pepe Calderin
Havana, Cuba
 
Pepe Calderin was born in Havana, Cuba in 1957 and migrated to the United States with his parents and brother in 1970. Beginning his creative career as an errand runner for a local architect, he is now the president of his own esteemed interior design firm, Pepe Calderin Design. With a flair for the imaginative and a deep respect for the spiritual, his work seeks to connect the soul with the physical environment.

That very philosophy shines through in his mixed media series’ of artwork. Inspired by the misguided value society places on the material world, his pieces transform old or recycled items into familiar images that reflect what the world really should be placing value on—love, family, community, and the environment.


Portfolio:

Animal Series

During the beginning of my career as an artist, my pieces were based on a study of how to use recycled and other types of unthinkable material to originate complex constructions of what nowadays would be considered as modern buildings. The main purpose of this work is to exhibit an illustration of how unbelievably humans have substantially valued the materialistic world more than life itself. Not only does this work demonstrate the poor awareness and the influential emphasis we place in society, but his work also provides the history of electronics over the past decade. The entire series is constructed of hundreds of diverse types of recycled material, allowing the artist to provide the history of the fast progression in technology.

Following this path, it has come to me the opportunity of experimenting new materials as coaxial staples. This new inexpensive construction material is used to innovate an unusual tactic to draw pictures of animal species. A simple and possibly recycled material does not only manufacture each portrait but, behind the making of this series, it also transmits a powerful message for the people. The symbolism is that through every nail hammered into the plywood we are penetrating the skin of every single animal to denote all the suffering we have brought upon him or her instead of appreciating the natural surroundings.  

Throughout human history, we inadvertently have killed animals for wrong purposes such as consumption, garments, and even beautification's. As the Buddha says, “One is not a great one because one defeats or harms other living beings. One is so called because one refrains from defeating or harming other living things,” imparting that we as living beings are ought to care and protect animals. This series focuses on creating awareness on the mistreatment we have brought both on the animals and on mother earth.

Urban Series

These pieces are based on a study of how to use recycled and other types of unthinkable material to originate complex constructions of what nowadays would be considered as modern buildings.

The main purpose of this work is to exhibit an illustration of how unbelievably humans have substantially valued the materialistic world more than life itself. Each building shows how attached we are to technology and how our only focus is to possess the newest, fastest, and most appealing technology without considering the damage we are causing to the environment and to ourselves.

Not only does this work demonstrate the poor awareness and the influential emphasis we place in society, but his work also provides the history of electronics over the past decade. The entire series is constructed of hundreds of diverse types of recycled material, allowing the artist to provide the history of the fast progression in technology.