Pete Jimenez

Born in 1960, Pete Jimenez is a Quezon City-based artist who graduated from the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts in 1982. He has been an active participant in various exhibitions since 2000.

Jimenez is among the few Filipino sculptors who have consistently explored the qualities of scrap iron as a medium, transforming rusty and discarded shards from junk shops into visual puns and garage-produced gems. He transforms a hard intractable material like iron or steel into sculptural statements of wit and whimsy, mirth and merriment.

The sculptor judiciously mediates between the dysfunction of three-dimensional debris and their need to find meaning in their sudden, new arrangement. Through the dynamics of imaginative collage-configuration, disparate pieces of raw material, divorced from their original context, find themselves in a new reality. This is the sculptural alchemy that is as formal as it is playful, wrought in the wonder of creation.

The display of his artistic versatility that summons totally unforeseen and unexpected results led him as a Regional Finalist in the Art Association of the Philippines’ (AAP) Centennial Painting competition in 1998. For two consecutive years, specifically in 2013 and 2014, he also won 2nd Place in the AAP Annual Art Competition’s Sculpture Category. He was shortlisted in the 2013 Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Fellowship Grant in New York City.

Pete Jimenez’s HINDI KEVLAR (Not Kevlar), an art installation of used military helmets numbering more than 300, was among a few featured in the First Manila Biennale held in February 2018 at The Fort Santiago, Intramuros Manila.

To date, he has put up 24 solo exhibitions in the Philippines, and has participated in several group exhibitions here and abroad.