Juan Garaizábal, wood at its best at ARCO 2021.
The artist and monumental sculptor Juan Garaizábal (Madrid, 1951) understands art as a journey of exploration, whose result must arouse fascination. With works exhibited all over the world, such as France, United States, Romania or Italy, this year he has participated in ARCO with a massive sculpture in the exhibition “Tienen madera” (They have wood). A fun play on words with wood as the main focus of the exhibition and the talent of the artists.
Garaizábal’s piece indisputably takes centre stage at ARCO due to its large size and the structure brings to mind the wine barrels that are typical of the winemaking industry. The artist lets himself go using the qualities of wood, such as geometry, touch and warmth, producing a wooden mass that creates that massive effect of glass; with the trunks cut into squares in a modular, almost matrix-like way, worked on directly with a chainsaw. The resulting work is the first of its kind, both in terms of materials, scale and the way in which it has been created.
