Carlos Medina

Carlos Medina was born in 1953 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. After finishing his art studies in 1975 in the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas de Caracas (School of Plastic Arts Cristobal Rojas), he produced his first large exposition in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo where he presented geometric works in iron assembly carved from Cumarebo limestone.[5]

In 1977, he was granted the fellowships by the Italian government and FUNDARTE (Fundación para la Cultura y las Artes). He spent seven years in Italy developing professional skills in carving, lathing, and 3D modeling by participating in workshops with Carlo Andrei from Gonari Marmi in the industry, crafting bronze sculptures in Pietrasanta Fonderia Artistica Mariani and attending courses in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara.[1][2] He received the 1975 Sculpture Prize in the 4th National Salon of Young Artists organized by the National Institute of Culture and Fine Arts (INCIBA) at Caracas, the Carrara City Honors in 1978 and the Critical Art Association Award (AICA), Venezuela in 1984.[1][2]

Throughout his training, Carlos Medina studied graphical techniques in the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium and frequents different workshops of sculptors like Sérgio de Camargo, Giò Pomodoro, Alicia Penalba and Gonzalo Fonseca.[6]

In 1984 he returned to Caracas where he presents the exhibition Esculturas, a series of more than 30 sculptures in granite, marble and travertine, with the addition of around 30 engravings and drawings using black and gold India ink. This exposition has been presented in the Museo de Bellas Artes and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas, as well as in the main arts museums of other cities like Barquisimeto, Porlamar and Maracay.[7]

Later he developed relationships with the great masters of the Venezuelan art Alejandro Otero, Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, who through their exchanges motivate him to orient his investigations towards a challenging intervention of the space.[5][6]

In the following decades he developed more than twenty large scale sculptures: Fragmentos de lluvia (Rain fragments) is a recurrent project that dates from 1989 and culminates in 2014 with a large scale replica as gift to the city of Caracas. It consist of seven metallic droplets of 6 meters high, now in open air by the side of the Francisco de Miranda Freeway, one of the main routes of the capital.[8] The works of Carlos Medina also integrates the public domain including Caracas Metro, SIDOR, and a variety of public squares and commercial centers in the national territory.[5]

From 2012 he started the Essentials concept in the MUSA (Museo de las Artes de Guadalajara), Mexico. The exposition has been presented in Panama City and Miami. It covers a series of delicate almost-geometrical structures constructed with the use of different techniques of blacksmith’s workshop, carpentry, laser cutting and refinery of PVC sheets.[3] Recurrent themes are based on abstract depiction of tears/droplets, surfaces and neutrinos (spherical atoms) suspended in three dimensional spaces.[4][9] ArtNexus summarizes his work as: the possi-bility of expressing through matter that which transcends the matter itself, the very essence of objects manifested only in the presence of objects.[10]

Carlos Medina's career has been awarded with several distinctions. In 1993 he won the grand prize of Salón Michelena LI edition and the Sculptor Prize in Argentina, in addition to the Honorific Mention in the I Biennale of Guadalajara (2008) and the 2014 Sculpture Prize from Venezuelan Association of Plastic Artists (AVAP) .[6]

Some of his exhibitions include: