The sculptor and draughtsman Xavier Mascaró (b. Paris 1965) belongs to a category of Western artists

notable for their genuine interest in other cultures. In his case this takes the form of a fascination with

archaic civilisations, and hence with ancient art. The genesis and origin of art lies in magical thought. Aristotle, with good reason, defined art (arstechné) as “an action through which human beings create a reality that did not previously exist”, following the example of how nature, drawing on hidden powers, creates perfect forms. In ancient civilisations, art performed a fundamental protective and magical role — mythological, religious or metaphysical— aimed at organising and deciphering the mystery of everything around them. People believed that artistic expression could influence the spiritual and natural world and attract good fortune, which is why the “magical” element of art, transcending the material and the rational, was used in rituals to obtain success in hunting, fertility and the protection of the gods. Art and magic envisage the same symbolic world of archetypes (basic forms) with the object of unravelling secrets and mysteries, and it is the artist-magician who exerts the power derived from both of them.

​

The exhibition Xavier Mascaró: Magical Origins invites us on a journey that spans more than 30,000

years, exploring the magical origins of art and their significance in the contemporary world through some of Mascaró’s sculptural groups and paintings. With good reason, he continues to follow that magical function in his work that makes him transcend his own reality, convinced that we have not come very far from those times when everything was attributed to the forces of nature and to divinity, from which we still seek protection in beliefs, ideologies or stories, like the human beings who preceded us. So he works as a “magician of the earth”, with a shamanic dimension, that of a creator making something, impregnated with that original magical element to produce new archetypes charged with ancestral symbolism.

​

Curator
Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz