ROBERT HERNANDEZ | NEVER DREAMT NEVER KNOWN
NOVEMBER 1 – DECEMBER 13, 2025
Never Dreamt Never Known marks the first solo exhibition of paper sculptures by Robert Hernandez. The works present a series of imaginary creatures that emerge through a sustained and cumulative process. Guided by intuition and careful sketching, Hernandez composes hereditary patterns of repeated forms that link the figures together. Their striding postures, multiple arms, and cartoon-like faces evoke both the mechanical and the mythic — esoteric robotic beings assembled from paper, precariously balanced yet alive with forward motion.
The material itself is central. Paper carries its own memory, holding the history of each fold and cut. Its capacity for renewal and transformation makes it an ideal medium for sculpture, allowing these figures to oscillate between fragility and strength.
FIRST FRIDAYS
NOVEMBER 7 | 5-9PM
DECEMBER 12 | 5-9PM*
First Friday events are free and open to the public. We hope you’ll be able to joins us for one or both of these evenings.
Hernandez will be at the gallery during November’s First Friday.
*Due to the WIVK Christmas Parade, the UT Downtown Gallery and the Art Emporium will be having First Friday hours on the second Friday of the month.
image | Paper Dragon
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert Hernandez is a mixed-media sculptor whose interdisciplinary practice integrates drawing and paper-based sculpture. His work explores the spatial and material possibilities of paper as both surface and structure. In 2023, he was awarded the Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, enabling research in Echizen, Japan, a region historically associated with traditional papermaking. During this period, he visited the Okamoto-Otaki Jinja Shrine, dedicated to Kawakami Gozen, the Shinto goddess of paper—a site that informed and deepened his ongoing engagement with material culture and ritual craft.
Hernandez was selected for the AIM (Artist in the Marketplace) program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2016, culminating in the inclusion of his large-scale paper sculpture El Tigre in the AIM Biennial Exhibition. He is also a recipient of the Keyholder Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop (2014), where he expanded his work in print-based processes.
His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Governor’s Island Art Fair, 8 Hour Projects at Allegheny College, Boston Young Contemporaries, the New England Gallery for Latin American Art, and the Boston Center for the Arts.