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WRONG SIDE OF THE FENCE

CHRIS MAESTAS [ 0 0 0 9 ]

The grass is always greener on the other side.

But true beauty lies in learning how to care for the ground beneath your feet.

In Wrong Side of the Fence, Chris Maestas (aka 0009) constructs urban landscapes where flowers bloom, survive, wither, and endure in adverse environments. Emerging between cracks, chain link fences, and grates, these flowers render visible the physical, social, and symbolic barriers that separate individuals from protection, stability, and possibility.

A third-generation American of Mexican and Spanish descent, Chris Maestas (1984) was born and raised on what is often described as the “wrong side” of Los Angeles – beyond the railway tracks, in neighbourhoods peripheral to the idealised image of Hollywood. In the 1990s, Chicano culture in these areas was strongly marked by codes of identity closely associated with violence and gang affiliation. Never fully recognising himself within that universe, the artist found in graffiti, skateboarding, and art ways to navigate biotypes and stereotypes –practices that, in turn, came to nurture the beauty of his own side of the fence.

His visual work emerges from these frictions: from the experience of not fully belonging, of learning how to exist between worlds. Almost as a self-portrait, his practice affirms the resilience of those who resist and move between distinct territories where potential is easily overlooked. The blooms operate as markers of beauty and potential in people living in contexts shaped by exclusion and constraint.

At first glance, these works appear as still lifes. Upon closer inspection, however, the images generated through AI-based processes reveal textures, fabrics, and items of clothing. This visual vocabulary traces back to the artist’s long-standing fascination with New York’s graffitiand streetwear culture of the 1990s, first explored in the series urbn artfct (2024). Jackets by The North Face, for instance – true uniforms of New York’s urban artists – become symbols of clothing as carriers of memory: garments that function as archives of lived experience. This logic is transposed, for the first time, to the landscapes of California in Synthetic Bloom (2025), and now continues in a commissioned series for Eterno. If the city represents where the artist comes from, nature emerges as a horizon of desire: the greener side, defined by deceleration, care, and presence.

WRONG SIDE OF THE FENCE

CHRIS MAESTAS [ 0 0 0 9 ]

The grass is always greener on the other side.

But true beauty lies in learning how to care for the ground beneath your feet.

In Wrong Side of the Fence, Chris Maestas (aka 0009) constructs urban landscapes where flowers bloom, survive, wither, and endure in adverse environments. Emerging between cracks, chain link fences, and grates, these flowers render visible the physical, social, and symbolic barriers that separate individuals from protection, stability, and possibility.

A third-generation American of Mexican and Spanish descent, Chris Maestas (1984) was born and raised on what is often described as the “wrong side” of Los Angeles – beyond the railway tracks, in neighbourhoods peripheral to the idealised image of Hollywood. In the 1990s, Chicano culture in these areas was strongly marked by codes of identity closely associated with violence and gang affiliation. Never fully recognising himself within that universe, the artist found in graffiti, skateboarding, and art ways to navigate biotypes and stereotypes –practices that, in turn, came to nurture the beauty of his own side of the fence.

His visual work emerges from these frictions: from the experience of not fully belonging, of learning how to exist between worlds. Almost as a self-portrait, his practice affirms the resilience of those who resist and move between distinct territories where potential is easily overlooked. The blooms operate as markers of beauty and potential in people living in contexts shaped by exclusion and constraint.

At first glance, these works appear as still lifes. Upon closer inspection, however, the images generated through AI-based processes reveal textures, fabrics, and items of clothing. This visual vocabulary traces back to the artist’s long-standing fascination with New York’s graffitiand streetwear culture of the 1990s, first explored in the series urbn artfct (2024). Jackets by The North Face, for instance – true uniforms of New York’s urban artists – become symbols of clothing as carriers of memory: garments that function as archives of lived experience. This logic is transposed, for the first time, to the landscapes of California in Synthetic Bloom (2025), and now continues in a commissioned series for Eterno. If the city represents where the artist comes from, nature emerges as a horizon of desire: the greener side, defined by deceleration, care, and presence.

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