Martin Lagares comes from La Palma del Condado, his hometown that joins the coast and the Onubense mountain range.Probably his overwhelming artistic personality, where the strength of the most primitive art marries the spirituality, is linked to his Spanish origin with its long tradition of sculpturing.Martin has an established career with numerous monuments exposed throughout Spain. However this creative is longing for experiments. That’s what we can observe in his artworks – the constant evolution.
He possesses a unique ability to capture the human feelings and translate them into sculptures which seem to come alive. That’s what define the great artist.Here is Martin Lagares exclusively for FOXYLAB New York:
At the age of 16, my hands formed a piece of clay and from that moment I was certain that this was my path. I have no family history, it was causality. I realised that sculpture was a discipline where my restless and curious being fits perfectly. From that moment I began to work the sculpture and I could not stop.
That depends on many factors: size, material, elements to represent… the truth is that I usually work very fast because I am one of those artists who believe in the emotion of the moment, in the imprint of the moment. I rarely think about the sculpture in question. I really like to let myself go and let the forms flow. That usually happens very quickly.
Until a few years ago, the commission absorbed all my sculptural work. At a given moment, approximately 6 years ago, I had the need to start creating something of my own, a more personal and authentic work. For me it is very important that sculpture transcends form and transmits emotions and feelings. Love is without a doubt, the feeling that moves the world, and I found in the kiss a fact that gave a lot of formal play and that did not leave indifferent. I began to work on sculptures of kisses in very different ways, in different formats and materials. To this day, I still feeling that I can get much more out of the sculptures of kisses, especially when personal circumstances accompany this feeling.
I have many artists from very diverse disciplines that have influenced my work. I especially value the inspiring capacity of music and literature. Within these, I could not name anyone in music because the list of authors of different styles would be endless. In literature, Juan Ramón Jiménez stands out above all. In the world of plastic arts there are several artists that I especially like from very diverse artistic periods: from the Renaissance artists Alonso Berruguete or Miguel Ángel, to Pablo Serrano or Picasso. Without leaving behind Giacometi or Marino Marini.
I consider fashion an artistic discipline very similar to sculpture for many different reasons. after all, both play with shapes, lines and compositional rhythms in the three-dimensionality of volume. It is something natural that in an artistic situation where the lines of the different disciplines are blurred, sculpture and fashion feed each other. Currently I do not have any planned collaboration, but there are several ideas that could take shape in the future.
This topic is very broad and gives a lot of play. To begin with, at a historical level, religion has been a great patron that has fostered art and creativity throughout a very long historical period. On the other hand, regardless of each person’s belief, religious feeling is something innate in human beings that is linked to their very existence and therefore to all forms of its expression. It is because of this that I believe that religion is a subject that in one way or another gives a lot of play in art and is something that we should not deny or reject.
In my artistic career, religious art takes on great importance because the society and the immediate environment in which I began to develop my art is closely linked to belief and popular religiosity. I started to work in this field without losing my particular stamp and without falling into the superficiality of an artistic tradition that fades into a cheesy neo-baroque and out of context. The essentiality of my art when it comes to reflecting feelings and emotions, especially in a field such as religion, made a niche for me in that artistic environment that brought me many commissions.
Without a doubt, formal art (despite being, as in the case of sculpture, so material) and the digital world have to go hand in hand. In fact, I think it is a good tool to make themselves known and spread the work of each artist. However, sculpture loses so much in this move to the virtual… elements that are so important, such as touch, the direct vision of the different points of view, etc… are diluted with the move to the digital and the perception of sculpture is impoverished by an excessively high percentage. I do not rule out tomorrow entering the world of NFTs but right now, I prefer to continue promoting the experience of contemplating sculpture in a direct and material way.
Sustainability is something completely imbued in current art, so it is impossible to be oblivious to it. However, sculpture, in many cases, has always worked with natural materials and with very natural processes, as in the case of ceramics or terracotta sculpture. Another very important factor in sculpture lately is cutting down with recycled materials.
Art has always been an element that in one way or another has reflected and manifested the historical circumstances of each moment. the artist has always known how to perfectly reflect this. But I don’t think that it should be an imposition or something obligatory. For me, what is truly important is the freedom in which each one wants to manifest or not. Without the fact of doing it or not being a reason for criticism.
I am currently involved in numerous projects, both at the exhibition level with personal work and commissions for monumental works and other small-format works.
