Cielo Félix-Hernández | Savior Complex

June 13 - July 11, 2025

Savior Complex marks Brooklyn-based artist Cielo Félix-Hernández’s third exhibition with the gallery, presenting a new body of paintings and works on paper. Pulling inspiration from video games and the early internet, the artist intertwines her digital life with tangible traces of her community and her native Puerto Rico. The paintings are suffused with a bright, white light – both the glowing screen of a GameBoy and the sun refracting through water.

Félix-Hernández applies oil paint in thin layers, often smudging or wiping away as she builds the composition to reveal texture and complexity beneath the glossy surface. The works have a watery, hazy effect; vibrant pinks, blues, yellow, and greens all appear as reflections cast on the canvas, as light bounces off mirrors and puddles. The works on paper ground the paintings with a mixture of crisp lines and soft shading. Drawing is where all of Félix-Hernández’s compositions begin, and she continually sketches moments from her life and her imagination.

Savior Complex asks what we wish to save when the files become corrupted, what we download to the hard drive when things become tenuous and intangible. Like the Powerpuff Girls, three animated sisters with superpowers, the figures in Félix-Hernández’s work define and defend themselves on their own terms. Yet precarity is a constant, and existence is a delicate process that requires care and patience. Félix-Hernández’s parallel practices of activism and organizing has reinforced this understanding, cementing her belief in community as a sustaining force. In the current moment of escalating state violence, especially targeting immigrants and the queer and trans community, Félix-Hernández’s work offers respite, softness and protection. 

Cielo Félix-Hernández (b.1998, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto-Rican transdisciplinary artist, living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Working primarily in oil paint, Félix-Hernández depicts figures who author their own narratives, constructed out of familiar Boricua and Caribbean iconographies.

Félix-Hernández received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Recent group exhibitions include Puerto Rico Negrx, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico), “Pictures Girls Make:” Portraitures, curated by Alison M. Gingeras, Blum & Poe, (Los Angeles, CA), Death of Beauty, Sargent’s Daughters (Los Angeles, CA), DOMESTICANX, curated by Susanna Temkin, El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY), Ojos del Perro Azul, Marinaro (New York, NY), Nine Lives, Fortnight Institute (New York, NY), Flame Tree, REGULARNORMAL, curated by Bony Ramirez (New York, NY), documento, Embajada (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Dynasty, curated by Amy Goldrich, Christopher K. Ho, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, and Sara Reisman, PS122 Gallery (New York, NY). She had her first New York solo exhibition nieta at Sargent’s Daughters in January 2022, which was reviewed by Artnet, Artsy and Platform Art. Félix-Hernández is in the permanent collection at El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY). She was an Artist-in-Residence at Abrons Art Center, New York, NY and Silver Arts, New York, NY. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.