Rome, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni hosts an exhibition dedicated to Mexican artist Javier Mar

From July 3 to October 6, 2024, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma and the Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano are hosting exhibitions dedicated to Mexican artist Javier Marín. The exhibition project, entitled MATERIAE, is one of the main events of cultural significance within the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Italy and Mexico.

Promoted by the Ministry of Culture, the General Directorate of Museums, the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and theAzienda Speciale Palaexpo, under the patronage of theEmbassy of Mexico in Italy, and under the auspices of the Presidency Commission for Culture, Chamber of Deputies, the exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Javier Marín Foundation, the Terreno Baldio Arte Gallery and the Barbara Paci Gallery.

Sculptor, draftsman, and painter, Javier Marín(Uruapan, Mexico 1962) has always paid homage in his more than 30 years of work to Italian culture and art history, contaminating pre-Hispanic-inspired themes with forms and languages proper to Tuscan Mannerism and Roman Baroque.

The exhibition recounts the artist’s journey and his research, from his early experiences in monumental sculpture - made with materials such as Oxaca red earth or bronze worked in Mexican foundries - to his new experiments in recycled resin, obtained through digital images or using 3D printers.

Marín’s works are the result of a dialogue between his culture of origin and Italian artistic experiences. In particular, of Mexican culture and history, the artist investigates, with a critical spirit and at the same time with confidence, the events of the 16th and 17th centuries.

MATERIAE is a collection of works that narrates, as a whole, the different directions taken by Marín with his research. Weightless and flexible bodies, fleshy forms, exuberant and in tension, find new expression through the use of new materials, media and formats: in addition to marble and wood, digital drawing, painting, polyester resin and tapestry.

Experimental and reflective, Javier Marín’s creative research uses material as a means to interrogate the possibilities of art today: is it possible to draw by expanding in physical space using current resources, or to sculpt in the virtual space of the screen? How can the randomness of numbers or artificial intelligence be integrated into artistic creation? The artist answers by erasing the differences between genres and modes of production, moving with unusual fluidity from one material to another: from graphic design to painting and sculpture, from analog to digital, from real physical space to the virtual space of the screen. With a fully postmodern gaze, he practices transmedia spatial art and explores, beyond sculpture, new dimensions.

In two Roman venues - with two simultaneous exhibitions - Palazzo Esposizioni Roma and Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano, the public will be able to experience Javier Marín’s working process, from preparation through drawing to transformation into monumental sculptures and tapestries. Presented at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma is the most recent production, focused on the use of new technologies and the theme of environmental sustainability developed through the reuse of waste resins derived from industrial production. On display are 35 works made of amaranth polyester resin, wood, tapestries, textiles, digital prints and videos. Located in the halls of the Baths of Diocletian is the monumental work Columna, more than 8 meters high, created in 2004, composed entirely of sculptural fragments of resin bodies, raised on a wooden base conceived as an ancient Roman column base. Alongside are 6 bronze sculptures and tapestries made from the artist’s own designs, executed using traditional weaving methods from the Yucatan area. Javier Marín has dealt with the city of Rome before: the exhibition De 3 en 3 at the MACRO Testaccio Museum (now the Mattatoio di Roma) was in 2012, while nine horses with monumental-sized horsemen and three resin giant heads found a place in Piazza del Pincio, symbolizing fields of battles and devastation that also impose reflection on those who fight.

Mexican artist born in Uruapan (Michoacán) in 1962. Over the course of an artistic career spanning four decades, Javier Marín has exhibited his works in more than three hundred individual and group exhibitions, in Mexico, the United States and Canada, as well as in several countries inCentral America, South America,Asia andEurope. Although many of his works are abstract in nature, he is best known, paradoxically, through his figurative sculptures. In his permanent research, he makes use of classical materials and techniques, side by side also with the development of new techniques, for example, mixed polymers that cast seeds, sugar, meat, tobacco and other materials. Recently, Marín has included 3D scanning and printing in his research, with integration, subtraction or hybrid techniques also digital photographic printing, in a constant exploration of new tools. His works are an invitation to viewers to focus on the evidence of the process, the central elements in the transformation of materials and the intervention of third parties, be they people or machines. His works form part of prominent public and private collections, including those of the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Museo de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, in Mexico City; that of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Monterrey; that of the Museo del Barro, in Caracas; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, in California; the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston; the Boca Raton Museum of Art; and that of the Latin American Museum, in Florida. To these are added the Blake - Purnell Collection, in New York; the Costantini Collection of the Museo de Arte Latino-americano, Buenos Aires; the Ersel Collection, in Turin; and the Art Collection of the Principality of Monaco. Of particular note, among its most recent activities, is the creation of the Javier Marín Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in 2013 and embedded in the environment of culture and art with the purpose of doing research, and creating links and professionalizing the plastic and visual arts. With this aim, it seeks to promote encounters and collaboration among vulnerable communities.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni.

Rome, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni hosts an exhibition dedicated to Mexican artist Javier Mar

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