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For Spanish artist Juan Garaizábal, sketches are more than just two-dimensional drawings on paper… in his hands, they are sculpted into three-dimensional installations evocative of eras and places lost in the sands of time.
Juan’s Memories Carved in Steel: Echoes from Dilmun and Beyond exhibition featuring 12 outdoor pieces, supported by a range of smaller models and sketches, is being showcased at the Bahrain National Museum until May 23 next year.
A joint collaboration between the RAK Art Foundation and the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (Baca), the exhibition was inaugurated by National Arts Council chairman and RAK president Shaikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, in the presence of Baca culture and museums director general Farah Mattar.
“My sculptures are like sketches in the air with the minimum possible number of lines, rising from a base of rock to recreate memories,” the 53-year-old Madrid-born artist told GulfWeekly.
“One of the pieces created exclusively for this show is called the Door of Dilmun, and it creates the idea of an entrance to the ancient city, with different levels of arches that could have existed back then, based on probability, from the documents and aesthetics that I have seen.
“The other one is called Land of Dilmun and it pays homage to Dilmun as a crossroads – a place where the West and East meet.”
In addition, there are 10 previous creations from Juan – like a large-scale vase previously a fixture within the gardens of The Louvre in Paris.
In addition to the 12 monumental pieces, there are 10 drawings and five smaller models of the outdoor installations, which are exhibited inside the museum.
“For each of these pieces, I usually conduct a lot of intensive research to determine the idea, after which there’s seven to 10 days of brainstorming and creating models to see how best to convert that concept into a tangible idea,” Juan explained.
“I create two to three models, to see what it looks like from every angle, and then send it off to be made, so in total, it can take 30 to 40 days for the sculpture ideas to be refined.”
Juan’s passion for sketching walks a fine line, pun intended, with the idea of invention… a concept he began toying with at a young age, after he received the book Jeux et Loisirs de la Jeunesse by André Roy, which roughly translates to Youth Games and Leisure Activities.
The book inspired him to build a range of catapults, rockets and robots, until his grandmother affectionately began to call him ‘little Leonardo’ – a reference to the famous Italian creative Leonardo da Vinci.
At age 12, Juan enrolled at a professional drawing academy before moving to Paris to study European Business. He then decided to pursue Fine Arts.
Juan describes his work as an intersection between sculpture and adventure, blending years of research with his own emotions and travels to create pieces that are timeless and universally relevant, while still rooted in the land that inspired them.
Early in his career, he sought inspiration outside contemporary art, but later embraced figures like Brancusi, Calder and Serra, along with artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Beuys.
He continues to push boundaries with upcoming projects in cities like Paris, London and Mexico City, while also working on smaller exhibitions.
In 2020, Juan won the Jing’An International Sculpture Biennial in Shanghai, China with his piece Ever Time Gate, voted for by half a million people.
For more details, visit @juan_garaizabal, @rakartfoundation and @culturebah on Instagram.
