MARIO VILLASIERRA

1970. Caracas, Venezuela

Mario Villasierra

The artist recycles every instrument that has already fulfilled the stunning effort of playing music; so, he offers the instrument a second life across the visual art in his works – it deserves it. These are sculptures/paintings that shows a triumphant resurrection, a joyful epiphany of form and color.

Villasierra -moreover- acts as a sponsor when he offers a collection of new instruments to a conservatory or a school for student’s use, in exchange for deteriorated ones or for those discarded by students. The exchange could be happier and more advantageous for both parties: young musicians play with their brand-new instruments, and the artist gives new life to the ones destined to oblivion.

In this way, many string or wind instruments pass through Villasierra’s workshop: violas, violins, guitars, mandolins, electric guitars, cellos, trombones, trumpets, saxes… somewhen a piano… each one of them will achieve a plastic trans- formation, a resurrection, a radiant aesthetic metamorphosis, setting a dialogue between form and texture and then, with the chromatism of new materials and pigments in the plastic universe of the author, they will come alive within the renewed language of the artist.

Villasierra departs from his old occupation as a creator of handmade motorcycles, because he has a talent and prodigious hands for art. He takes some ocher or gray, flat and blunt materials, to revive them through a new language that heaves them above their origin. This constitutes his free, creative, admirable work as a self-taught artist, work he has carried out since the ‘90s.

Inside his artistic activity, a kind of respect for creation beats. It is a pound for what it is already manufactured, the objet trouvé energized by Marcel Duchamp in the historical avant-garde in Paris in the 1920s. There is a certain philosophy of reu- sing waste, of producing life and making the planet a bit more sustainable, no need to abuse of new raw materials. Nature deserves respect and a voluntary recovery is found when in the sight of those who know how to caress things with an artist’s look.

Coming from a long path, the Venezuelan/Spanish author rises a renewed plastic work, moving forwards silently and constantly in creativity through collections grouping pieces according to different concepts: … Second life (2017 – 2018), in allusion to recovery and second life; Phantom (2018-2019), since instruments are veiled in a mysterious way within the canvas; Evolution (2019 – 2020), before a renovating transmutation… to cite some names appointed to series produced in recent years.

Research is a key task in Villasierra’s work. As disciplined visual artist, he manipulates and works with sought and found materials to achieve a different effect with them.