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Javier Pérez visual artist |
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| Born |
Javier Pérez González (1968-12-31) December 31, 1968 |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Education | University of the Basque Country Beaux-Arts de Paris Berlin | Karl Hofer Gesellschaft |
| Known for | Installation art, sculpture, Video art, performance |
| Notable work |
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| Movement | Contemporary |
| Awards | |
| Website | javierperez |
Javier Pérez González [1] (Bilbao, 1968) is a contemporary Spanish visual artist, renowned for his large-scale art installations.[2]
In his artistic practice, the Basque artist has experimented with various media and disciplines, including sculpture, drawing, photography, video installation and performance.
The thematic axes of his work focus on aspects related to the human condition, addressing inherent themes such as impermanence, temporality, transformation and the cyclical nature of existence.
He has been awarded several prizes, including the Gure Artea 98 Prize awarded by the Basque Government and the Critical Eye Awards from Radio Nacional de España, both awarded in 1998.
In 2002, he represented Spain at the 49th Venice Biennale (Italy).
Life and career
Javier Pérez was born in Bilbao, in the Basque Country, Spain, on 31 December 1968. He is the youngest of three siblings and comes from a family of teachers.
He began his artistic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of the Basque Country (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea), combining this with studies in contemporary dance. He obtained his degree in 1992 after completing an exchange programme through the Erasmus scheme at the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft in Berlin and the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA). [3]
In 1993, he moved to Paris to pursue a ‘Mastère Spécialisé’ at the aforementioned École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (popularly known as the Beaux-Arts de Paris) and to further his training as a dancer. However, he abandoned this activity shortly thereafter to devote himself exclusively to the visual arts. His time in Paris lasted five years, during which he established his first contacts with the French art scene. In 1995, the artist’s work was included in the Passions privées exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, a significant milestone in his fledgling professional career.
The following year, in 1996, a grant from the Délégation aux Arts Plastiques in Paris enabled him to hold his first solo exhibition, entitled Rester à l’intérieur, at the Galerie Chantal Crousel in the French capital. In 1997, philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman selected his work for the L’empreinte exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A few months later, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg presented Estancias, his first solo museum exhibition.
In 1998, he returned to Spain and settled in Barcelona, where he has worked continuously ever since. That same year, he presented the exhibition ‘Hábitos’ at the Reina Sofía National Art Museum in Madrid and was awarded the Gure Artea Prize by the Basque Government in recognition of his academic achievements. In 2000, two years later, he exhibited his work for the first time at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as part of a collective exhibition of Basque artists entitled ‘La Torre Herida por el Rayo: Lo Imposible Como Meta’ (The Tower Struck by Lightning: The Impossible as a Goal).
In 2001, he was selected to represent Spain at the 49th Venice Biennale, which was a milestone in his professional career. The following year, in 2002, his work A Piece of Crystallised Sky, created for the Spanish Pavilion, was permanently installed in the atrium of the Artium Museum in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
Since then, his work has been exhibited continuously in Spanish and international museums in both solo and group exhibitions. In addition to the aforementioned exhibitions, notable ones include: Mutaciones [35] at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid’s Retiro Park, organised by the Reina Sofía National Art Museum;
Lamentaciones [39] in the Cloister of Burgos Cathedral (2009);
El Ángel Exterminador [40] at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (2010);
Glasstress [41] at the MAD Museum of Arts and Design in New York (2012);
Donation Fondation Florence et Daniel Guerlain [42], Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013);
I’ve Got Glass! I’ve Got Life! at the Toyama Art Glass Museum in Japan (2015); Passion for Drawing at the Albertina Museum in Vienna (2019); Sections-Intersections/25 Years of the Guggenheim Museum Collection in Bilbao (2022), conceived to mark the institution’s anniversary; and Presencias Ausencias in San Sebastián (2022), a retrospective exhibition covering the last fifteen years of the artist’s career to date.
The artist’s work is held in the collections of major international museums, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MNCARS in Madrid, and the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.
