About Miguel Trelles

Miguel Trelles Hernández is a Puerto Rican visual artist who lives and works in New York City’s Lower East Side.  A Puerto Rican painter/printmaker Trelles Hernández creates Chino-latino paintings, Latin Pop silkscreens while drawing “Mesoamerican Fantasies”. He has also been actively engaged in curating exhibitions at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (The Clemente).  Trelles’ yearly Borimix visual arts group show at The Clemente has been taking place yearly since 2006.   Since 2017 he has been at the helm of Teatro LATEA, The Clemente’s original theater space.

Trelles Hernández works are figurative.  Since 2001 he has labeled a significant portion of his output as Chino-latino.  These works re-contextualize dynastic Chinese painting through a vibrant palette and the presence of speedboats, planes and autos.  Through a parallel printmaking endeavor Trelles has created a Latin Pop body of silkscreens that pays homage to the “serigrafía” printed in Puerto Rico during the second half of the 20^th Century.  His current “Mesoamerican Fantasies” drawings project fantasy illustration clichés into settings imbued with references to the Classic Maya.  An Adjunct Professor of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College, Trelles holds a B.A. in Art History and Studio Art at Brown University and an M.F.A. (1995) from Hunter College.

Besides San Juan, Ponce, New Haven and New York, the work of Miguel Trelles has been exhibited in Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Santo Domingo, Havana, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Paris and Chengdu (Szechuan).  Trelles’ paintings have been acquired by several permanent collections such as those in El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, El Museo de Arte de Ponce, La Fundación Gabarron (Valladolid), as well as El Museo del Barrio and Deutsche Bank (New York).