Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.

Javier Marín's Materiae seems imbued with pain.

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

Promoted by the Ministry of Culture, the Directorate General of Museums, the Department of Culture of Rome Capital, and the Special Company Palaexpo, with the patronage of the Mexican Embassy in Italy and the auspices of the Cultural Commission, 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, painter, Javier Marín (Uruapan, Mexico 1962) has always paid homage, with his over thirty-year career, to Italian culture and art history, blending pre-Hispanic inspiration with forms and languages of Tuscan Mannerism and Roman Baroque.

The exhibition narrates the artist's journey and research, from his early monumental sculptures—made with materials such as red earth from Oaxaca or bronze worked in Mexican foundries—to new experiments in recycled resin, obtained through digital images or using 3D printers.

Marín's works are the result of a dialogue between his native culture and Italian artistic experiences. Specifically, the artist critically and confidently investigates the events of the 16th and 17th centuries in Mexican culture and history.

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

Experimental and reflective, Javier Marín's creative research uses matter as a means to question the possibilities of art today: is it possible to draw by expanding into physical space using current resources, or 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 graphics to painting and sculpture, from analog to digital, from the real physical space to the virtual space of the screen. With a fully postmodern perspective, he practices a transmedial spatial art and explores new dimensions beyond sculpture.

In two Roman venues—with two simultaneous exhibitions—Palazzo Esposizioni Roma and Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di Diocleziano, the public will experience Javier Marín's work process, from preparation through drawing to transformation into monumental sculptures and tapestries.

At Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, the most recent production is presented, focusing on the use of new technologies and the theme of environmental sustainability developed through the reuse of waste resins derived from industrial production. 35 works made of amaranth polyester resin, wood, tapestries, fabrics, digital prints, and videos are exhibited.

In the halls of the Terme di Diocleziano is the monumental work Columna, over 8 meters high, created in 2004, entirely composed of sculptural fragments of bodies in resin, raised on a wooden base conceived as an ancient Roman column base. Next to it, 6 bronze sculptures and tapestries made with the artist's drawings, executed with traditional weaving methods from the Yucatan region.

Javier Marín has previously engaged with the city of Rome: in 2012 the exhibition De 3 en 3 at the MACRO Testaccio Museum (now Mattatoio di Roma), while in Piazza del Pincio there were nine monumental horsemen and three giant resin heads, symbols of battlefields and devastations that prompt reflection even among those who fight.

JAVIER MARÍN

A Mexican artist born in Uruapan (Michoacán) in 1962. Over a forty-year artistic career, Javier Marín has exhibited his works in more than three hundred solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, as well as in various countries in Central America, South America, Asia, and Europe. Although many of his works are abstract, he is paradoxically better known for his figurative sculptures. In his ongoing research, he uses classical materials and techniques, also accompanied by the development of new techniques, such as mixed polymers that embed seeds, sugar, meat, tobacco, and other materials. Recently, Marín has included 3D scanning and printing in his research, with integration, subtraction, or hybrid techniques, as well as digital photographic printing, in a constant exploration of new tools. His works invite viewers to focus on the evidence of the process, on the central elements in the transformation of materials, and on the intervention of third parties, whether people or machines. His works are part of significant 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; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Monterrey; 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 the Latin American Museum in Florida. These are joined by the Blake - Purnell Collection in New York; the Costantini Collection of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires; the Ersel Collection in Turin, and the Art Collection of the Principality of Monaco. Of particular note among his recent activities is the creation of the Javier Marín Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2013, involved in the culture and art environment with the aim of conducting research, creating connections, and professionalizing the plastic and visual arts. To this end, it seeks to promote meetings and collaboration with vulnerable communities.

(curated by Laura González Flores)

And if matter resides in our shadow and our body is nothing more than a three-dimensional projection?

INFO

PALAZZO ESPOSIZIONI ROMA

Via Nazionale, 194

www.palazzoesposizioniroma.it

Facebook: @PalazzoEsposizioni | Instagram: @palazzoesposizioni | Twitter: @Esposizion

HOURS

Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 20:00, closed on Monday. Entry is allowed up to one hour before closing.

TICKETS

Full price € 12.50 - reduced € 10.00 - youth 7 to 18 years € 6.00. Free entry for children up to 6 years.

The ticket is valid for all ongoing exhibitions. Free entry for under 30s on the first Wednesday of the month (from 14:00 until closing).

INFO

Museo Nazionale Romano – Terme di Diocleziano

Via Enrico de Nicola 78

[email protected]

www.museonazionaleromano.beniculturali.it

HOURS

Open from Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30 to 19:00, last entry at 18:00.

TICKETS

Single venue full ticket € 8; reduced € 2; combined ticket for all venues full price € 12; reduced € 6, allowing entry once to each of the Terme di Diocleziano, Palazzo Massimo, and Palazzo Altemps