Jesu Morantel’s work moves in multidisciplinary and addresses from installation and sculpture to photocollage, painting and 3D animation. His eclecticism deepens the intrinsic characteristics of the materials and media in which he works: from the conservationist and insulating nature of the resin, as time capsules, contrasting its transparency and brightness to its relic character, as well as the chromatic density of detergents and everyday products based on their volume and liquidity. As for the digital work, he is interested in its fully artificial character, usually ephemeral in that it is lost in the archeology of the network, and in the flatness of the pixel and the 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 drinks from the artistic and anthropological record of universal cultures, their myths and beliefs, to configure a reflexive network of allegories to the origins of human concerns.
"It started with the heat. Someone's forehead is hot. Soon we are a million volcanoes, many in danger of going out. People go into psychosis. We never thought this would happen. With the plague comes loneliness. The organism goes into torpor. Its integrity is tested. We are going through the ordeal of our own fragility. We are beautiful being fragile, we are beautiful being an organism, we are beautiful being warm individuals. Heat gives the fever, but also the desire to get closer. The hive has never behaved as much as such. One plague is enough to divide another. Never has the biology of our bodies had so much to do with distance and waiting. In the meantime, I'm still looking for a symbol for an idea, which I already had a long time ago. I've always liked brackets. They are the same symbol to represent an origin and an end. And it is because endings are also an origin."
Jesu Moratiel A Coruña, Spain. April 6, 2020
Mitochondrial Eve (2019)
60 x 50 cm, digital print on canvas
Degradation of a Kiss III (2018)
60 x 45 cm, digital print on canvas