0009 (Chris Maestas)

Born in 1984 in the United States, 0009 (Chris Maestas) developed his visual language through graffiti, skateboarding, and street culture in Los Angeles during the 1990s. Working across painting, digital media, and generative AI, his practice examines how images are constructed, remembered, and reassembled in a post-photographic context.

For his solo exhibition at Eterno, 0009 extends the technique developed in his most recent body of work, using digitally constructed textures inspired by late-90s and early-2000s technical streetwear fabrics. Paneled jackets, synthetic materials, and utilitarian clothing become a structural language rather than a subject in itself.

These textures are used to depict fragments of memory: urban artifacts, objects, atmospheres, and scenes drawn from the artist’s lived experience. From a distance, the works may appear fluid, intuitive, even impressionistic. Up close, they reveal themselves as carefully engineered images, built from folds, seams, and synthetic surfaces.

The tension between what feels natural and what is entirely constructed sits at the core of the exhibition. By applying a language rooted in streetwear and urban material culture to scenes of memory, 0009 explores how personal history is shaped, compressed, and reconstructed over time: where effort disappears, but its weight remains embedded in the image.