Visual artist @petejimenez recontextualizes a stainless steel water tank by crushing it with the mechanical force of a forklift. The object ceases to be industrial waste and begins to resemble the first bite of the archetypal forbidden fruit.
For Jimenez, the creative process is less about an artist’s capacity to articulate form and more about a creator’s persistent pursuit of grace and personal redemption.
Echoing Viktor Frankl’s reflections on the human will to meaning amidst hardship and pain, his studio practice is intertwined with a personal journey of faith—one shaped by the search for spiritual meaning in a world on the edge.
Story and photos by @patrickdeveyra
Layout by @agnesdaniella
#petejimenez #finaleartfile #artph #lifestyleinq
Shot and interviewed visual artist Pete Jimenez (@petejimenez ) for Lifestyle.INQ (@lifestyle.inq ). In our conversation, he reflects on how a life once at “rock bottom” has transformed into a practice of redeeming the broken, one found object at a time.
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Every morning, Pete Jimenez walks two hundred steps to an adjacent lot where his studio—which he refers to as his laboratory—is located. It is a space packed with found objects that bear the scars of wear and tear, discards that reveal histories through surface degradation and ruin. There, Jimenez recontextualizes a stainless steel water tank by crushing it with the mechanical force of a forklift. The object ceases to be industrial waste and begins to resemble the first bite of the archetypal forbidden fruit.
For Jimenez, the creative process is less about an artist’s capacity to articulate form and more about a creator’s persistent pursuit of grace and personal redemption. Echoing Viktor Frankl’s reflections on the human will to meaning amidst hardship and pain, his studio practice is intertwined with a personal journey of faith—one shaped by the search for meaning in a world on the edge, and for moments of alignment where the material world meets a higher spiritual frequency.
Read more: /570131/pete-jimenezs-garden-of-forbidden-apples/
#petejimenez
#LifestyleINQ
Pete Jimenez in front of his artwork A Show of Hands a 10’ x 10’ piece made of almost 4,500 used linemen’s leather gloves, each marked by labor and time.
Presented by Underground at ALT 2026, the work is now installed in a museum in Batangas. Captured right after installation, mounted by the artist with the Underground crew.#tatakunderground #petejimenez #artph #alt
Pete Jimenez @petejimenez works with scrap metal and found metallic objects, transforming them into sculptures.
Gallery: @finaleartfileinc
#filipinoartists #contemporaryart
PETE JIMENEZ
You are the apple of my eye
Pete Jimenez meditates on Biblical excerpts, reframing the fall in the Garden of Eden through the looming threat of water scarcity in the Philippines. An installation of thirty-one crushed stainless-steel water tanks shaped like bitten apples correspond to the days of a month, suggesting both cyclical time and a countdown, a finite measure of a resource we often presume to be inexhaustible.
Through the strenuous compression of industrial discards, Jimenez stages an act of destruction that becomes creation. The tanks, once vessels storing vital sustenance, are rendered fragile and wounded. In their damaged forms, they evoke desire, consumption, and consequence. In an archipelago surrounded by water yet threatened by its scarcity, the allegory sharpens. The fall from Eden becomes a contemporary parable: paradise forfeited, a modern day exile of our own making.
Jimenez reclaims the apple as an emblem of divine care as much as human transgression--a rupture in our stewardship of the natural world.
Yet despite the weightiness of both his materials and his themes, Jimenez injects artistic wit, creating fluid and recognizable shapes that hold their own form of beauty. Balancing irony with urgency, the work proposes empathy. It recognizes that what we regard as “the apple of our eye” must extend beyond symbolism to awareness of current social paradigms. Jimenez offers an exhibit that is both cautionary and hopeful, calling for action to save the very systems that sustain life.
By Stephanie Frondoso
PETE JIMENEZ
You are the apple of my eye
Tall Gallery
March 07 – 31, 2026
Pete Jimenez meditates on Biblical excerpts, reframing the fall in the Garden of Eden through the looming threat of water scarcity in the Philippines. An installation of thirty-one crushed stainless-steel water tanks shaped like bitten apples correspond to the days of a month, suggesting both cyclical time and a countdown, a finite measure of a resource we often presume to be inexhaustible.
Through the strenuous compression of industrial discards, Jimenez stages an act of destruction that becomes creation. The tanks, once vessels storing vital sustenance, are rendered fragile and wounded. In their damaged forms, they evoke desire, consumption, and consequence. In an archipelago surrounded by water yet threatened by its scarcity, the allegory sharpens. The fall from Eden becomes a contemporary parable: paradise forfeited, a modern day exile of our own making.
Jimenez reclaims the apple as an emblem of divine care as much as human transgression--a rupture in our stewardship of the natural world.
Yet despite the weightiness of both his materials and his themes, Jimenez injects artistic wit, creating fluid and recognizable shapes that hold their own form of beauty. Balancing irony with urgency, the work proposes empathy. It recognizes that what we regard as “the apple of our eye” must extend beyond symbolism to awareness of current social paradigms. Jimenez offers an exhibit that is both cautionary and hopeful, calling for action to save the very systems that sustain life.
By Stephanie Frondoso
