KOCTEL: Orange Realm

Current artist-in-residence KOCTEL is showing his recent works in his solo exhibition 'Orange Realm' in Beijing.

Fernando Hernandez ( KOCTEL) was born and raised in Seville, a city where the scent of orange blossoms floats through the streets in spring, and bitter oranges decorate the sidewalks like silent, forgotten relics of a sun-soaked mythology. Growing up surrounded by these citrus trees, the artist developed a sensibility shaped by color, repetition, and the surreal coexistence of beauty and absurdity. “Orange Realm” is both a personal statement and an open invitation into a visual world where memory, humor, and exaggeration collide. His work is deeply influenced by the language of cartoons, their elasticity, bold outlines, and emotional intensity. Through this lens, KOCTEL reinterprets the everyday as something fantastic, vibrating with artificial color and symbolic charge.

In this exhibition, citrus becomes a recurring motif not only as a fruit, but as a metaphor for the artist's own emotional landscape. It represents sweetness tinged with acidity, nostalgia glazed in synthetic hues. The orange is both an object and a character; it laughs, cries, spills, melts, and explodes. It is the sun, the eye, the wound, the toy. Using painting, he constructs a universe that feels both intimate and hyperreal. Saturated with playfulness and guided by instinct, each piece is a fragment of an imagined narrative part autobiography, part fever dream. The citrus fantasy is a place where Andalusian roots meet cartoon logic, and where personal mythologies are peeled open to reveal something both tender and electric.

Exhibition: August 30 to September 30, 2025

Venue: Hilton Beijing, 1 Dong Fang Rd,North Dongsanhuan Rd, Beijing