Madrid. The Mexican artist Javier Marín, born in Uruapan, Michoacán, in 1962, is one of the three preselected creators, in addition to Miquel Barceló and Cristina Iglesias, by the Board of Trustees of the Construction Board of the Sagrada Familia to make the final execution of the most complex work of the modernist architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926): The facade of the glory of the glory of the Glory of the Glory of the Glory. The construction of the Church began in 1882 and it is expected that it ends around 2035.
In an interview with The daythe Mexican artist explained that the sacred family is a work that It is inherited from generation to generation
And therefore he feels the duty to contribute his own vision
y Contemporaneity
ultimately The way of seeing today’s world
.
Marín has a long artistic career, which includes projects and interventions in public spaces worldwide, including the Lange Voorhout Square, in The Hague (2010); La Piazza del Duomo, Chiesa e Chiostro di Sant’Agostino, in Pietrasanta (2008); the convent of San Francisco de Asís, in Havana (2006); the Plaza Juárez and the former temple of Corpus Christi, in Mexico City (2005); the church of Santa Catarina, in Lithuania (2003); The Espace Bellevue, in Biarritz (2001), and the house of America in Madrid, on whose main facade created the Monumental Piece Chalchihuites (2008), in addition to a project that was ultimately crucial for its pre -selection in Barcelona: the intervention of the facade of the Cathedral of Zacatecas.
– How did it become one of the preselected artists to execute the final work of the facade of the glory of the Sagrada Familia, with which a construction of more than 100 years culminates?
– I don’t know how it was; I do not know anyone of the team of architects of the Sagrada Familia or anyone related to it in Barcelona. They simply searched me online a month and a half ago and the project directly proposed. They explained that it would be part of a list that will be presented to the Board of Trustees and if they say yes, the invitation would already be formal (as happened on March 30).
They invited me to visit the Holy Family, which I knew until then as one more tourist. That was a very special visit in which they taught me the work, the museum and we talked a lot about Gaudí’s work. When I said goodbye to them they told me that they would notify me and the next news was when I was already published in the media. It was very exciting. And now I am waiting for the signing of the contract to start working and present the project at the end of the year, more or less, and the idea is that the three can be left, both or all three.
– Would you prefer to do it alone or execute it with the other two preselected ones, Miquel Barceló and Cristina Iglesias?
– We will be all three. I know, without being an expert, their work, I like it very much and I think it would be very interesting. It is a very large intervention, the facade is immense and would cover from glory to hell, so I think it would give for good collaboration. In fact, when they invited me to do the intervention in the Cathedral of Zacatecas I met Barceló’s work in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca and I really liked his matrica vocation and with a lot of expressive force. I also like matter very much and that the processes develop and talk, so I think it would be a good idea.
– Do you already have any idea to start the project, a starting point?
– I suppose that with the contract some type of thematic line will come and you have to see the entire iconographic theme, because it is still a church that is active and there are many lines that left Gaudí traces that must be respected. In fact, the part that moves me the most is to be able to collaborate with such an impressive work and an artist of those dimensions, which is an icon in the history of mankind. It is a work that is inherited from generation to generation, so in some way I would have to contribute part of my work and vision, of our contemporaneity and, finally, a way of seeing today’s world.
– What point will a margin of freedom to expand?
– The general lines are drawn and we know that the facade of glory, and Gaudí speaks a bit of what could be there, but there is no model and there would have all the freedom. It is true that there are some issues that have to do with the symbols of the Church and these things, but there is no scheme set by him, we must simply try to read what he did to understand why they are calling us as artists.
– But I imagine that we will have to have a harmony, a common logic …
– Absolutely, we must understand the architectural context, the use of space, artistic connotation. Something similar happened to my intervention in Zacatecas, where it was also very difficult to intervene the architecture because it had a lot of character, so you have to be very careful and enter with all possible respect to harmonize in the best way. In Zacatecas I think it went very well and I hope something similar happens here.
– Before being preselected, did you especially interested Gaudí’s modernist architecture?
– Not in depth, but I was very interested in the transgressive character, who breaks rules and tries to shake the foundations of architecture, as well as his most important works and of course the Holy Family. Now I want to delve deeper into his work to try to understand it and then work freely to see what comes out. I’m dying to have the models that are going to send me to start working.
–Gaudí wrote a lot and was also a very religious person, do you think you can, in addition to knowing your work, deepen the artist’s personality?
– I think so, I would love to understand more or less what he did, what he thought, what he believed. We will try to do that from his writings of his work and his spiritual life, regardless of religion, because I do not know if I agree with any religion, but I do think that spirituality should move to all.
– Is it involved that a part of the Board of Trustees that will finally decide the project or winning projects are also the levels of the Church?
– Yes, but apart from that they are people committed to their church and their religion, they are also sensitive people who can understand the language of an artist and think in the future beyond the guidelines that their own religion gives them.
– His expressionist sculpture fits with Gaudí’s modernist architecture?
– I think so and I imagine that that’s why they looked for me. I also plan to follow the general guidelines of the modernist tradition, but I will not follow the modernist lines because I think it would be anachronistic and absurd.