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Javier Carro Temboury

b. 1997

About In November 2023, Javier Carro Temboury established a rigorous protocol at the Palais d’Iéna - a rationalist daydream in pink concrete. Gathering assorted cups on a table, the artist asked visitors to choose one and, after enjoying a coffee, place it on a nearby table, initially blank, gradually filling up during the performance. «Vases communicants,» as André Breton might have said: reality and dream touch and penetrate each other. They fertilize each other. The second table, randomly composed in this way, is then flooded with concrete, drowning the cups in a soon-solid, alchemical bath. The artist extracts bricks and slices that, resembling large pieces of cake, reveal residues of cups trapped in this sumptuously heterogeneous material. Cutting (through) the thickness of reality: Gordon Matta-Clark is not far. The containers - made of terracotta - find themselves contained by concrete, in a reversal of values. They float in impure matter, much like the casts of Pompeii floated in the earth, buried but preserved. The concrete resembles permafrost, that dense layer which, on our planet, freezes the living and preserves it. There is a geological and archaeological quality in these cross-sections imagined by Javier Carro Temboury: he seems to mechanically accelerate a natural process, solidifying and enclosing reality through a skilled process of concretion. «Crystallization,» as Stendhal might have said. Immobilized in concrete and then cut, the cups are reduced to a profile, to a simple sign that brings them closer to hieroglyphs, ideograms, or cuneiform writing, perhaps even to concrete poetry, populated with «u» and «v.» Accordingly, one would like to be able to read, and even pronounce, these slices that present themselves like pages, like marvelous portions challenging the utility value of the world, as seen in the work of the fierce accumulator Subodh Gupta. Javier Carro Temboury incorporates and amalgamates. Weaves and interweaves. This is evident in his Intercontainers, which embed weathered ceramics - plates and dishes - through an unyielding system of slots measuring 3.8 by 6 centimeters, so that halves of pieces never match around a central axis. This poetry of displacement and diversion, reaching its peak with the grand Terrazzo modules, a sublime screen, evokes the analytical cubism of Juan Gris or the sculpted hybridizations of Julio González. There is a voluptuousness at play, a smoothness and precision in a single gesture, a splendor and melancholy in a single movement. In this brutalist softness, there is virtuosity and grace. Poetry and enchantment. A «humble elegy,» as Federico García Lorca might have said. Colin Lemoine
CV Solo Exhibitions 2023 Housewarming, Villa Belleville, Paris, FR 2022 Lazy days in Vienne. Kurzbauergasse Oida, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienne, AUS BBQ theory. Duo show with Romain Jaccoud, Aspa Contemporary, Madrid, ESP 2021 Campoarrasada, Contemporary, Madrid, ESP Abatti-Brûli, (dnsap) Beaux-Arts de Paris. Open Studio, Poush Manifesto, Clichy, FR 2020 Messidor, Lerchenfeld 2, Hambourg, ALL Group Exhibitions 2023 Objekt Fetish, Kunstraum Schwaz, Tyrol, Austria 2023 Mexico City Blues, Galeria Campeche, curated by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mexico, MEX City.Beyblade, with Romain Jaccoud and Maïa Lacoustille, Julio Artist Run Space, Paris, FR Cuadernos de Galeria Arniches, Madrid, MEX Uncut Ways at La Volonté 93, Saint Ouen, FR «Restes de Traces» curated by Eladio Aguilera at the Tour Orion, Montreuil, FR 2022 4th Printmaking Biennal Yunnan, CH Felicità 22, curated by Thomas Fougeirol, Poush Aubervilliers, FR Souvenirs ByeBye Gallery, London, UK A Performative Journey, Galerie de la Jeune Création, Romainville, Paris, FR Demain puis Demain..., Galerie Jeune Création, Romainville, FR Exposition libre 2, 35 37, Francs-bourgeois, Paris Prix Terre Plein prize show, CC Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, FR Hysterie de l’eternité, Le Gallo, Boulogne, France, FR Eurofabriques European print project, Grand Palais Ephemere, Paris, FR 2021 Potentially Undefinitely, Künstlerraum Vorwerkstift, Hambourg, ALL Disorder of Possibilities, curated by Julio Artist-Run Space, at Espace Voltaire, Paris, FR Under the Bridge, curated by Patricia Feliu, Barcelone, ESP Estampa Contemporary (fair), duo show, Aspa Contemporary’s booth, IFEMA, Madrid, ESP 2020 Let’s Drink to Your Health, ASA Studios Hamburg, Shortcuts curated by Nikita Kotliar, X-pon gallery Hamburg, ALL Raus Project online exhibition + ephemeral action at the docks of Hamburg, ALL Annual Exhibition, T. Demand Class, HfBK Hamburg, ALL Near the Railway, StadtMuseum Düsseldorf, ALL Artist Residencies 2024 Artist in residence at the Contemporary Ceramics Center of La Borne, Henriche- mont, France, FR 2023 Artist in residence (July-August) at the Palais d’Iéna, Paris, with the support of the CESE, Paris, FR Artist in residence (January-June) at Villa Belleville, Paris, with the support of the Spanish Embassy in France, Paris, FR Academic Background 2019-2020 HfBK Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg. (Gäststudent) sculpture department, Klasse Thomas Demand 2016-2021 DNSAP (avec félicitations). Ecole Natio- nale des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Ateliers Wernher Bouwens et Abraham Cruzville- gas, Paris Fr Awards 2022 Félicité des Félicités Prize / Inclusion in the collection by the Friends of the Fine Arts of Paris, involving the permanent entry of a sculpture into the collections of the School of Fine Arts of Paris, Fr Joseph Ebstein Prize for Sculpture by the Fondation de France and the Beaux-Arts Legacy, Paris, FR Artist in residence in the ASA program (March-July) at the Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Vienna, Austria. 2022-23 Maker in residence at FacLab, University of Cergy-Pontoise, Gennevilliers, FR Finalist for the Terre Pleine Prize, Contem- porary Ceramics, CC Pierrefitte, France. 2021 Artist in residence, SimplonLab, Paris, FR
Javier Carro Temboury

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