JAVIER MARÍN
About Javier Marín
During three decades of work, Javier Marín has developed a distinguished career as a visual artist that includes, to date, more than 90 solo exhibitions and 200 collective shows in Mexico, Latin America, the United States, Europe and Asia, in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy; the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; Royal Palace of Milan, Italy; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, USA; Museo de Arte Colonial de Bogotá, Bogotá, Colombia; Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, Mexico; Amparo Museum, Puebla, Mexico; Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, France; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico; among many others.
In 2008 Marín was honored with top prize at the Third International Beijing Biennial and was awarded a prestigious project for the Zacatecas Cathedral (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) in Mexico. In 2010 his monumental altarpiece in Zacatecas was unveiled and he also presented sculptures in Shanghai (World Expo 2010) and Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium).
(continued)
Marín’s artworks demonstrate remarkable knowledge of the human form garnered from years of drawing directly from the figure. He began sculpting exclusively in clay, later moving to bronze. In recent years the artist has embraced innovative methods such as combining polyester resin with organic materials such as seeds, tobacco, soil or dried meat fibers.
Process is an obvious passion for Marín — spikes of bronze are often left exposed to show the paths of molten metal flowing into the cast figure. During the creation of a work, words might be inscribed quickly into the raw clay, holes gauged, or support structures left exposed. It is this deliberate coarseness combined with Marín’s elegant classical approach to the figure that give his sculptures such power and substance.
His work captures the mystery, drama and dignity of the masterworks of the past by Michelangelo, Rodin, and Mayans. The massive bronze nudes of Javier Marín offer a unique blend of Western European and Mexican perspectives while embracing the vitality of Renaissance sculpture.
Javier Marín takes from modernity, beginning with Michelangelo and in dialogue with the legacy of Rodin, both the intention of leaving a trace of the process on the material, and the relationship between form and material under tension, a development that generally leads to the production of sculptural variations or series, with each element in the series a kind of study or rehearsal of the possibilities of or glosses of the “idea” (indicating that this could be a “sculptural idea;” one that cannot be disassociated from the creative process itself). These rehearsals not only contain a conceptual or formal cause, but also relevant material, and involve exploration of the possibilities, both of a material and of the interaction of different materials. The ways in which this hybrid interaction takes place in the oeuvre of Javier Marín allow us to detect a resemblance between the legacy of modernity and a heterogeneous creative attitude that is more specifically contemporary.
Excerpt: Javier Marín / Corpus by Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros
Javier Marín was born in Uruapan, MX, in 1962, and studied at San Carlos, the National Acadamy of Arts, Mexico. He currently lives and works in Mexico City.
Selected Awards and Honors
World Expo, Shanghai, China, 2010
Zacatecas Cathedral Award, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Zacatecas, Mexico, 2010
Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, 2010
International Beijing Biennial, First Prize, Beijing, China, 2008
Selected Collections
Boca Raton Museum, Boca Raton, FL
Ersel Collection, Turin, Italy
Museum of Clay, Caracas, Venezuela
Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico
Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, Constantini Collection, Argentina
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, Mexico
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, Mexico
The Blake-Purnell Collection, New York, NY
The Malba-Fundación Constantini, Buenos Aires
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Education
San Carlos Academy, (the National Autonomous University of Mexico/UNAM) Mexico City, MX.
