Javier BALMASEDA

Born in Cienfuegos (Cuba) in 1971, he shows an interest in drawing from a young age and enrols in elementary art school at just ten years old. After learning the basics of traditional techniques, he acquires a defined taste for tridimensionality and enters the National Fine Arts School (ENAP) in Havana to study sculpture in 1986.

In 1994, he became a teacher at the ENAP and puts together his first major exhibition Acorazados [Battleships], a series of sculptures made out of aluminium trays called bandejas de comedor [Dining hall trays]. From this point on, he has used humble objects as a conceptual, imperious and blatant force in his work. Finally, he reused the tray in his Homenaje a Mondrian [Hommage to Mondrian] (1995) in its purest form, rejecting any visual mannerism or decorative input.

That same year, he enters the Art Institute of Havana (ISA) and develops De paseo anda la vida [Life strolls around] and Golpes de la vida [Blows of life]. A car is dissected into modules resembling a tridimensional maze showing two completely opposite views on convulsive immigration as a compelling solution to current social issues.

Detaching himself from the academic environment, he travels to Europe hoping to broaden his horizons while assuming his new migrant condition and knowing well he could never return to Cuba as an artist.

At the start of this new phase, he presents his ambitious work Sólidos Aparentes [Apparent Solids] (1999) at the Chateau de Nedde in France. This vast installation is formed by an accumulation of daily objects creating a metal mesh inhabited by living rats. Apparent Solids reflects on the artist's first impression of consumerism, a society subordinated to the object, inseparable and dependent on it. It is the contemplation of the human kind as creator but also prisoner of its own evolution.

He settled in Andorra in 2000 and displayed a year later Hoy no todo me es ya indiferente [Today I'm not indifferent to it all anymore] (2001), a work in which he manipulates the concept of scaffolding as a metaphor on the construction of the thought. It is but an attempt to recognize the construction of memory and, at the same time, a more personal claim to restate one's artistic condition and the refusal to abandon it.

From that moment on, Balmaseda also explored other practices such as architecture, design, digital animation and illustration for television ads.

In 2007, the Bolivarian Museum of Contemporary Art (Colombia) offered him the opportunity to participate in the exhibition Itinerarios. He exhibited El placer de quedarse quieto[The pleasure of being still] (2007)part of the series Vías y Soluciones [Roads and Solutions]. A fourteen-meter long patch of asphalted road hangs like a hammock from one side of the space to the other leaving hardly any space to visitors. It highlights man's passivity, evasive attitude and detachment when faced with social evidence.

In 2013, he was selected by Commissioner Henry Perier to represent Andorra at the 55^th Venice Biennale with the work Fixed in Contemporaneity, an installation of ten horses with cut-off legs supported by hydraulic jacks and other mechanical equipment. The distressing image creates a vision of contemporaneity coming from the artist's own experiences and the impotence of questioning a society immersed in deculturalisation and human deracination.

In 2017, the artist was assistant commissioner for Andorra's pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale and collaborated then with photographer Roberto Battistini for his project Gainsbourg Still Alive with several artists like Jacques Villeglé, Orlan and Hervé diRosa.

In 2018, he created another installation La ruta migratoria in the Vías y Soluciones. The art world was conquered by his artwork, which was exhibited by the baudoin lebon gallery during Art Elysées.

He currently lives and works in the Principality of Andorra.