MONUMENTS

Photographs, Collages, and Paintings by Mike Fernandez

MONUMENTS brings together Polaroids, found-image collages, and mixed-media paintings shaped by recurring themes of the body, form, and nostalgia.

Drawing from vintage bodybuilding imagery, organic shapes, and architectural structures, the exhibition examines how ideals of strength, beauty, and permanence are constructed, remembered, and reimagined through image-making.

The art-directed Polaroids, created with wardrobe styling, hairstyling, and set design, are stylized portraits that blur the line between past and present.

The collages rework found imagery from physique and bodybuilding magazines, combining it with bold color fields and Matisse-inspired forms.

The paintings expand these ideas at a larger scale, layering collage, acrylic, and plaster to merge the figurative and abstract.

Together, the works transform familiar images into contemporary monuments—situated between the nostalgic and the present, the iconic and the personal.