No Art Here & Heads, 2020

Javier Calleja is an emergent artist from Malaga, a port city in Southern Spain. Based on contrasts and disjunctives, his artistic practice explores grandeur and smallness, obviousness and crypticism, childishness and adulthood, tenderness and sarcasm. Playing with spaces, scales and materials, the artist departs from a deep-rooted comic influence to create his own peculiar and make-believe world of characters with gigantic and almost disembodied eyes. Javier does not like to talk about the underlying meaning of his work, claiming that ‘good magicians never explain their tricks’. He wants to preserve the short-lived magic that takes place when we first look at his pieces, postposing the subsequent rationalization by our brain. Javier is represented by the leading-edge gallery Nanzuka.

Coinciding with Nanzuka’s 2G presentation of ‘No Art Here’ showcasing the artist’s freshest site-specific sculpture and paintings, Javier has released a limited edition of collectibles in collaboration with the high-end brand creator Medicom Toy. No Art Here & Heads features a fun-size version of the playful Magritte-inspired sculpture headlining the exhibition, together with a pile of his emblematic cartoon heads forming a totem-like figure. Javier is considered one of today's hottest artists. His last work to hit the auction block fetched a whopping half a million USD, resulting in ten times its initial estimate.