The seabed and the sky, water and air, these are the territories that Riera i Aragó explores since his beginnings, to the controls of submarines and zeppelins, gadgets of almost magical nature that tell us about the totems of the twentieth century: the machines and their urgency. Faced with the frenzied rhythm of the last century, the artist stops the atmosphere thanks to his sculptures, bronzes and rusty iron that seem to float in an original element whose material we do not know.

Portrait of Josep Maria Riera i Arago

Josep María Riera i Aragó (Barcelona, ??1954) is the GUEST ARTIST at Art Madrid'17, which is held from 22 to 26 February at the Crystal Gallery of CentroCentro Cibeles, in Madrid's Art Week. As other artists, as Ouka Leele and Carmen Calvo, did in past editions, Riera i Aragó will be the author of the official poster of the fair whose image - one of his planes - will be transformed into a limited edition lithograph.

The expressive possibilities of his sculpture (weightlessness, floating masses), his dialogue with the urban scene and his plastic approach to this kind of "archeology of machinism", make the work of Riera i Aragó an essential piece to understand a generation of artists who, in the 80's of the past century, resumed in their own way the languages ??of painting and sculpture. Nature, whether as landscape to its suggestive sculptures or as ecologist inspiration/aspiration through the use of recovered materials, is another of its great themes and very present in its pieces of islands and in the series "protected species".

Work of the artist Jose Maria Riera i Arago

"If in other times artists had taken the landscape, mythological narratives or the human figure as themes of inspiration, Riera i Aragó opted for one of the most characteristic emblems of his time, the world of the machine and the artifacts in general. But it does not do so by a literal or mimetic realism, but by talking ironically about the machine, its transience, its capacity for suggestion, on a journey back and forth from real to imaginary space, which ultimately makes all these referents Be an immense excuse to make art "(Daniel Giralt Miracle)

The work of Riera i Aragó is present in important collections and museums around the world, among others: Musée de Céret, France; Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, ??Spain; Musée d'art Modern de Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico D.F; Vincent van Gogh Fondation, Arles, France; Städtische Museen, Heilbronn, Germany; Museum Otani, Nishinomiya, Japan; MACBA, Barcelona, ??Spain; The Boeing Company, Chicago, USA; Collectie NOG Van Het. SNS Reaal Fonds, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art Union Fenosa, La Coruña, Spain. Among the exhibitions held in recent years are the extensive retrospectives of three museums in France, the Musée d'art modern de Céret and the Musée de Collioure, as well as the Musée d'art Modern André Malraux, MuMa, Le Havr. He did also its large format sculptures for the Tournay-Solvay Park in Brussels, within the framework of the exhibition dedicated by the Folon Foundation. Riera i Aragó lives and works in Barcelona.