Jean-Marc Martinez

Some play cards, do puzzles, try sudoku while others solder, desolder and resolder… Jean-Marc is one of them…

His subjects are intimate and universal, his sculptural universe is slender, like the character… a tall, somewhat sulky and damn grumpy staker! Jean-Marc Martinez is a sculptor by nature, it is also a behavior.

I'm telling you, this guy is a metalworker!

To the delight of his collectors, he amazes us with his “Elegantes": female sculptures, gracefully dressed; of his “Totems": sculptures that seem to scratch the sky under a futuristic air.

This soothes and disconcerts him like a child… He is jubilant, the welding machine as his only companion.

You just have to observe him during his many exhibitions: he places, moves, arranges, disturbs, triturates, crosses out his sculptures like a rascal; he seems to be saying like Mr. Loyal: “All on the track and let the show begin!".

I tell you again, with Jean-Marc, childhood is never far away!

His mischievous side makes him a subversive, the one who breaks all the codes in force. From his first welding machine, the dissatisfied craftsman has become the virtuoso artist, exploding the too narrow frames of his art, giving it a new dimension.

The artist works in 3 dimensions: from contemporary furniture, following in the footsteps of those illustrious sculptors Diego Giacometti, François-Xavier Lalanne or Garouste and Bonetti... to intimate, memorial sculptures (think of the one in homage to Abbé Pierre ) and other paintings-sculptures… Everything about Jean-Marc is personified, everything comes to life in his hands and the form becomes bony.

His sculpture is not hysterical, it is serene and its curves have the humanity of his plastic work.

The artist is restless, but his tribes are a field of matter.

I think Sculpting is a job, but for Jean-Marc, it's craftsmanship that has content.

His statuary is a duality constructed between instinct and reason, between classicism and avant-gardism; it is the hallmark of Jean-Marc Martinez. This intimate marriage of sensitivity and gesture that makes the greatness of the artist.

It is the iron that dictates the shape of the whole; of these pieces of metal which look like nothing, but which already have the features of what does not yet have a figure, which are chosen, combined for their affinities with the emerging volume.

To ward off the void, the artist manipulates the most diverse formats and materials. His personal story made of small details and great adventures, plunges us into an enchanted cosmogony.