Javier Felix
Born in 1976, Colombian-Spanish visual artist, graduated from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia in 1998. He has a Master's degree in Visual Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain (2008). Additionally, he has studied a wide range of artistic approaches ranging from classical art in Florence, Italy, to traditional Native American and pre-Columbian tribal art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The core of his work is corporality as language, in which the concept of “anthropo-zoomorphism” (transformation) stands out: an essential characteristic of the ancestral art of his country of birth, that he translates into contemporary visual languages and mediums. His art is experimental, encompassing a multitude of techniques whose practice and development led him to find his own processes, based on mixtures of materials and amalgamations that constitute his own vocabulary to speak about a Multicultural -and yet Universal- life experience.
His work has been exhibited in Bogotà, Madrid, London, Lisbon, Santa Fe (New Mexico) and recently in Florence, Italy, where he was selected to participate in its XIV Contemporary Art Biennale, during October 2023.
Spanish Art critic Gregorio Vigil-Escalera wrote about his work:
Javier Félix's work consists of rediscovering the existential archetypes that underlie the human unconscious, and charging them with a new fierceness that circulates between his spectators and himself like an overflowing current of energy.
My work is a meditation about forms in which layered compounds and body amalgamations produce complex beings that are often in the process of a tragic and -sometimes- comical metamorphosis, entrenched in a game of transparencies and hidden layers as substance of their presence, expressed through a hybrid visual language that is -above all- experimental and playful. Such transfigurations serve as a pivot to establish dialogues within contradictory planes; At these intersections, syncretisms between figural and abstract forms intermingle.
Most of my works materialize with the integration of two or more different techniques, giving special interest to an organic interaction and interdependence of several spatial dimensions within the same artwork, in which “style” is a by-product of plastic experimentation and not a pre-established destination.
Exhibitions - selection 2019-2023:
2024 - “Metaphors for Peace”. Centro Cultural Gabriel García Marquez. Embajada de Colombia en España, Madrid, Spain
2023 - XIV Florence Biennale. Fortezza da Basso. Florence, Italy
2023 - Connections 2 Afro-Ibero-AmericaaPGn2 Gallery. Lisbon, Portugal.
2021-22 - Disorganism and its Shadow. Individual exhibition. Perve Galeria, Lisbon, Portugal
2021 - Ante.Visão, Galeria Santa Maria Maior, Lisbon, Portugal
2020-21 - Dialogues 2.0, Perve Galeria, 2020-21: Lisbon, Portugal
2020-21 - Cycle celebrating the 100 years of Cruzeiro Seixas - Cem Nadas Perfeitos, Atmosfera m, Lisbon. Portugal
2019 - Global(ism), aPGn2, Lisbon, Portugal
Earlier exhibitions:
2018 - Studio Art Fair International, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 - New York Armory Arts Weeks Stricoff Gallery, New York, Chelsea, USA
2017 - Art Against Oblivion. Boadilla de Rioseco, Castilla León, Spain
2015 - "Deconstructions of Javi Felix" Nidok Art Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
2015 - "A window to Malasaña" Feeding Art Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2015 - "Where your eyes take me" Feeding Art Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2013 - "Indigenous Brilliance", Olocau, Valencia, Spain. (Artist and Curator)
2011 - "Currents 2011" New Media, IAIA Digital Dome. Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
2008 - Photographers, Raiowski Gallery, Valencia, Spain
2008 - "Observatori" digital art exhibition, Centro del Carmen, Valencia, Spain
2003 - Group exhibition, IAIA Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
2002 - IAIA Museum Artist Exhibition, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
2001 - IAIA Museum Artist Exhibition, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
2000 - "5 cardinal points" Casa Cuadrada Gallery, Bogotá, Colombia
1999 - Selected artists, Comune di Firenze, Florence, Italy
1999 - Short Films, New York University Auditorium, New York, USA
1998 - "DO IT" by Hans-Ulbrich Obrist. In collaboration with Juan Fernando Herrán, Casa de la Moneda, Bogotá, Colombia
1998 - "META-PLASTIC." Individual Exhibition. Wiedemann House, Bogotá, Colombia
1997 - XVIII Regional Artists' Hall, old Santa Fe station. Bogotá, Colombia
1994 - Selected students, León de Greiif Auditorium, UNAL, Bogotá, Colombia
1994 - Exhibition of Cano Artists, National University of Colombia. Bogota Colombia
