Pete Jimenez’s garden of forbidden apples
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.
In a time marked by renewed interest in spirituality, Jimenez’s practice reflects a broader turn toward interiority. Against a backdrop of generative artificial intelligence, geopolitical instability, and ongoing global conflict, his work suggests a return to the inner life as a site of meaning-making—a kind of secret garden of reflection and faith.
In this conversation, Jimenez shares the core of his most recent exhibition, “You Are the Apple of My Eye” at Finale Art File—a visual tour de force featuring 31 larger-than-life stainless steel sculptures of bitten apples, formed through the crushing force of a forklift. He also reflects on how a life once at “rock bottom” has transformed into a practice of redeeming the broken, one found object at a time.
Can you walk us through your creative process as a studio artist? What lies at the core of how you make work?
I like collecting and acquiring objects that fascinate me—objects that are hard to find. These objects are the materials I use in my artistic practice. I simply stack them up in my makeshift studio on a vacant lot. If I am a painter, these objects are my oil paints and canvases.
When ideas or concepts pop into my mind, I try to recall what objects I have in my studio. I do “quick sketches” in my mind and execute them quickly by roughly putting or assembling objects together. I allow the objects to take their form as raw as possible. For me, the less I introduce manipulation or artistic intervention with the assembled objects, the better the results.
There is a magical appeal that readymade objects already have, and with less intervention in the process, I feel I am giving more “respect” to the assembled work.
Part of my artistic practice is always to have fun and enjoy the process. I think when people look at a work, the work is a mirror of the artist’s feelings and emotions.
The apple is the core iconography in your current show, “You Are the Apple of My Eye.” What makes this symbol so meaningful to you?
The apple as an icon in my current show began with an experiment I did with a discarded stainless steel water tank. I brought the tank to a friend’s backyard, who happens to own a forklift. I recall reading an anecdote about how John Chamberlain (an American sculptor) used his 1965 Ford Mustang to bump and crash some of his steel materials for his sculpture pieces. And so, I did.
The stainless steel water tank’s crashed shape looked like a bitten apple. From then on, I developed the idea of an apple as an image or icon of the fall of man.
I was reminded of the forbidden fruit that was bitten in the Garden of Eden. That act of disobedience jump-started the fall of man from the garden. But God, in His mercy and love for man, provided a solution to man’s disobedient heart.
So every day, for the rest of man’s life, God is telling man, “You are the apple of My eye.” There are 31 “bitten apples” in the exhibition, representing 31 days in a month to remind us of God’s care for you and me.
Your exhibition references several key Biblical passages. How important is faith in shaping your practice as a visual artist?
Thirty-five years ago, I came to a point in my life where I was at rock bottom. I had nowhere to go but to look up. That’s how life is—when you’ve reached helplessness, you have nowhere to go but to look up to the heavens and surrender everything to your Creator. I surrendered my life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior.
I began to experience changes in my life, as if the old things had passed away while new things kept coming, including how I viewed the world around me.
This explains why most of my works and shows are subtle pronouncements of my faith, such as my solo show with Artinformal in 2024 (Travelling Light), my 2025 solo with The Drawing Room (Dwell), and even my first solo with West Gallery in 2000 (Lost and Found Objects).
Your body of work often incorporates found objects, such as improvised jail weapons and bomb shells. What draws you to these materials, and why do they remain central to your practice?
These objects bear marks of character—marks that define their history, marks that tell unique stories. I call them “mga peklat ng karanasan.”
Your work seems to tackle the tension between falling from grace and being saved by it. What is it about grace that holds most weight to you?
The Bible speaks clearly about grace as an undeserved favor. I do not deserve God’s favor, yet He gives it to me anyway. That is grace—God’s Redemption at Christ’s Expense.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9)
Joseph Beuys said, “Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking, and structures that shape and inform our lives.” If you were to leave us with one quote that captures your fundamental view of art, what would it be?
Let your art explode! Patay kung patay! Huwag mong isipin na magbebenta ka, kasi hindi ka manufacturer/fabricator. Artist ka—dapat gawa ka lang nang gawa! Mag-eksperimento ka at pasabugin mo ang iyong mga eksperimento.
Ang studio mo ay hindi pabrika. Ang studio mo ay ang iyong laboratoryo.
