Gustavo Velez

“Michelangelo and Bernini intended to erect their heavy marble sculptures to the sky by supporting them on a pyramidal base hidden in the middle of the structure of their figures.

This sort of tripod was brilliantly hidden from view, disguised with characters and objects that were nothing more than an engineering device to ensure the verticality of his monumental works.

The sculpture of Gustavo Vélez, although it is commonly pointed out a similarity and closeness to the procedures and materials of those great masters, actually operates in the exact opposite way. Vélez opposes the tripod of the sculptors of the past to a single axis on which it seems that the pieces are magically held in full equilibrium. That is why his work is produced as a deliberate and complex exercise of balancing the forces of matter while giving them form. So in the midst of creation, Velez as an artist constantly grapples with the no small matter of overcoming gravity, a dangerous craft when working with monumental dimensions and weights of tons”.

Christian Padilla