HOUSTON — Art of the World Gallery – Houston’s leading gallery of modern and contemporary art – is ecstatic to introduce Javier Marín’s first ever exhibition to Houston: Javier Marín Masterworks. Known around the world for his sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographic montages, the Artist is pleased to finally bring approximately thirty selected works to the fourth largest and most multicultural city in the United States in show to the public from January 16^th through March 16^th, 2019. 

Born in 1962 in Uruapan, Michoacán, Javier Marín grew up among a family of creatives. One of ten siblings, and with an artist father, Marín always knew he wanted to be an artist himself. Eventually, Marín enrolled into the National School of Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.

That his works have come to Houston and Art of the World Gallery is a testament to the incredible Latin American community and artistic desires of America’s most diverse city. In a career spanning over thirty years, Javier Marín and his works have been exhibited in ninety-plus solo exhibitions and over two hundred collective exhibitions around the world. From inclusion in two Venice Biennales to numerous other exhibitions worldwide, Javier Marín’s works of art have become coveted items in permanent collections – many private, and many now housed in such places like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Miami’s Bass Museum of Art, the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and more – a veritable world tour that also includes cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Paris, Madrid, Turin, Brussels, The Hague and New York City.

It is Marín’s unique motif and ways of working that have allowed so much of the artistic world to be captivated by his work. His signature is definitely influenced by Baroque and Age of Enlightenment working with human body and mythic figures in both constructed and deconstructed forms. From a young age, Marín notes, he loved working with the human figure, using modeling clay to “[see] what the eye or hand looked like.” His sculptures’ undeniable mystery and fantastical emotions and expressions seem to transcend time and engage viewers and collectors to look at them not only as a whole but also as the sums of parts, able to see each individual piece and how it connects to the other to produce a final work. His artworks are reinvented and deconstructed while depicting classical figurative forms, sometimes grotesque, but echoes what is felt by all humanity reflecting emotions like pathos, anger, pity and resilience.

His use of a variety of materials and techniques, including bronze, clay, polyester resin, and more, as well as mixed media painting, give his works a dynamic and ephemeral nature. Yet, they also display a rare permanence that cannot be underestimated – enhanced by the fact that viewer can see the support structures of his works, a fragility and elegant classicism quite unique to contemporary art. The constant tug of emotions and eternal questions his works elicit are signs of a truly great master living artist worth noting – and perhaps collecting.