JAVIER MARÍN: SCULPTURE AS A SYSTEM AT HILARIO GALGUERA

Galería Hilario Galguera in Madrid presents Deus Ex Machina, the first solo exhibition by Javier Marín (Uruapan, Mexico, 1962) with the gallery. Curated by Hilario Galguera, the exhibition brings together nearly thirty works that revolve around the relationship between image, matter, and system. Throughout his career, Marín has developed a practice grounded in the analysis of the creative process, where the accidental and the unexpected become transformative elements of form. In doing so, he reconsiders the meaning of the artwork and, consequently, the language of his sculpture.

Beyond sculpture—perhaps the artist’s most recognizable medium—the exhibition explores the possibilities of textile, oil painting, digital processing, and pictorial intervention. Two tapestries woven using the traditional gobelin technique highlight the potential of a visual coding system that constructs the image gradually. This same logic appears in Marín’s intervention on a work originally presented at the Venice Biennale in 2005, where he traces in white oil paint a carpet of bodies to emphasize only the steel structure that supports it. The series Cortes continues this line of inquiry, scanning sculptures that have been fragmented in order to translate what was once volumetric into a linear process.

There is also a didactic quality in the audiovisual piece in which Marín describes the process as one of constant transformation. A wooden head carved by a robotic arm concludes a trajectory that begins with drawing and manual modeling, continues through digital scanning, and ends with mechanical execution. Much like experimentation with artificial intelligence models and their translation into reality, the Mexican artist ultimately proposes new approaches to what contemporary sculpture can be, understanding it as a system of dialogue between technique, material, and technology.

Javier Marín. Deus Ex Machina can be seen until April 10, 2026 at Galería Hilario Galguera, Doctor Fourquet 12, Madrid (Spain).