The history of Western sculpture recounts the relationship between man and the space surrounding him, presenting this relationship in language that expresses consciousness of the figure’s creation. The sculptor is the craftsman of a visual artwork realized through a process of delimitation, who puts a bit of space, a piece of the world, into an enclosure where the materials that concretely occupy that space offer their skin to our gaze.

Something rather disturbing affects one’s spirit upon entering any space, preferably solemn and immense, impressive and laden with history, where the equally monumental figures of Javier Marín are found, interconnected in accordance with a carefully calibrated dramaturgy. The impression of unity leads one to assume that they came to be there naturally—that they have always been there—before that disturbing sensation suggests an ancient order, collapsed and heretofore unknown, conferred by a world just as ancient and no less unknown that has entered into a dialogue with ours.

A series of texts bearing my signature attest to the fact that for several years I have tried to unravel a mystery: the uniqueness of Javier Marín as a sculptor, the distinctive stamp of his sculptures in the history of the visual arts. In these texts I have asked myself by my own right—from my eccentric position as a psychoanalystto interrogate works of art that have no need for my disquisitions and even less for my interpretations, for they say on their own what they have to say without outside interference.

Toda forma es por perpetración: es fascinans por una parte y tremendum en la otra cara.
Y mysterium en las dos. Siempre. Nos es totalmente cercana, como la sombra; y ajena, otra y lejana, como el eco. Creada en la vida misma, perturba que crezca en ella y, llegado el momento, desaparezca. Pero lo que más nos anonada es que nunca es el acontecimiento natural mismo.

Baroque poetics reinstate, reevaluate, and develop the Classical conception of art as mimesis or imitation. Art is indeed representation, but the aim of representation is not merely to present the object transposed onto canvas or to space. It is to impress, to move, to persuade. But to persuade in what manner? Maybe in none at all, since truth and beauty cannot simply be imposed, as can a building, a picture, a film, or a sculpture. In fact, art is the exudation of the imagination.

The contemporary mania to reduce everything to crystal clear, synthetic images for face le circulation ¡n the media has also touched art. We reduce artists to formulas and slogans that, instead of bringing us closer to under-standing the creator’s work, distance us from it.

Javier Marín is a well-known Mexican sculptor whose work transcends boundaries. Initiated handling the human figure, of playfull spirit and simple forms, almost schematic, in small dimensions, grew in time, both physically and emotionally, affecting the positions, complicating them.

Javier Marín’s art is the creation of a virtuoso. Describing his work with such a complicated term involves a multiple discourse—arguments that are a part of this text. Art, in the first place, is the human possibility of transforming matter into expression.

La obra de Javier Marín despierta curiosidad estética, es compleja en sus referencias a la historia del arte, y constituye un reto para el análisis crítico. Los aspectos formales de sus esculturas —diseño, composición, uso del medio y del espacio— son seguros y sofisticados. Las figuras dominantes y a menudo líricas parecen estar poseídas por una gracia sin esfuerzo. Sin embargo, la fuerza y la presencia de estos objetos deja muy claro que su creación requiere una gran energía, tanto física como intelectual.

Only through weakness may any metaphysical uneasiness be discovered in Javier Marín, in each one of the forms that he looks for within himself, in his Venuses, his warriors, his torsos and his horses. There is no uneasiness, in the trivial sense that is existential.