Wedding crushers

2026
Oil on Wooden Panel
61 × 46 cm

About the work

Fragments of a triceratops skull are grafted onto the body of a Pikachu toy, inside the arched nave of a church in Bristol. The three sources share nothing but the surface that holds them: fossil, plastic and stone receive the same light, the same defocus, the same edges eaten by the dark. Sense does not accumulate across the references: it thins. The title names the operation, a wedding with uninvited guests, where a body assembled from extinction and mass production takes its place at the altar.

Nelson Hernández

Nelson Hernández (b. Chilean Patagonia) is a painter based in London. His pictorial practice reflects critically on how globalisation shapes the construction of contemporary identity. Born in a remote territory, he has observed from the periphery how what is distinctly local is progressively absorbed into a standardised global culture.

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Drawing on art history and popular culture, Hernández places notions of identity, belonging and memory under tension through a non-hierarchical use of style and imagery. Critical decontextualisation and the juxtaposition of the ancient and the contemporary lie at the core of his research.

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He holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London.

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