I create mixed media artworks incorporating whimsical references to cartoons, toys, movies, cassette tapes, pizza slices, Coke, and cupcakes to remind us of the persistence of childhood nostalgia. Growing up in a peripatetic, low-income military family, I saw how intense memories can attach themselves to cheap, transportable pop culture objects, such as Pez dispensers, comic books, Kool-Aid packaging circa 1990’s, punk and hardcore band tee shirts, toys from 1984-1995 and punk and alternative music cassette tapes. My work is informed by an awareness of the emotional weight of these mass-market products.
Dan45 Hernandez works and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dan is currently a MFA student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He considers the different social and environmental forces that shape our self-perception through his drawings and sculptures that layer references to pop culture and childhood. Based in Las Vegas, he has exhibited in galleries and museums in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Illinois, and California. Recent exhibitions include Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium curated by Dr. Emmanuel Ortega at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, previously shown at the New Mexico State University Museum and Gallery 400 in Chicago and Wily Coyotes at West Charleston Library in Las Vegas. Hernandez is the creator of SOCIAL COMA zine. He recently started a new fashion brand/art collaborative with his wife, LovervilleUSA. His wood sculptures have appeared quietly in urban environments across the Northwest.
