Artists should cling to their origins and then find their own form. Interview with José Marín by Klimt02

Tell us about your background. What were your first influences to be creative and become an artist and what has drawn you to contemporary jewellery?
From a very young age, I had great admiration for Dalí, for me he was the perfect painter, he had an overflowing imagination and an impeccable technical mastery, "I wanted to be a painter" but at that time I was a bad student, I was bored at school and I always suspended, at At the age of 13 I began to study jewellery at the school of the Guild of Jewelers of Valencia and at the age of 16 I finally left school to become an apprentice in my father's workshop.

I dreamed of making artistic jewels like the ones I had seen from Dalí, for example, "The Royal Heart", "The eye of Time" or "Ruby lips" are the ones that marked me the most.
I have spent 24 years making commissioned high jewellery and participating in competitions with artistic pieces and even some of those jewels now I see really surrealistic over time. In 2002 I enrolled in the EASD to study the Higher Cycle of Artistic Jewelry, that's when I understood many of the things that I did intuitively, it could be said that this was the final trigger where I fully entered contemporary jewellery


How important is networking for you in your professional practice and what are your preferred tools for this?
For me it is fundamental, it has taken me out of anonymity, I have been able to publicize my work, it has allowed me to exhibit in half the world and even to be invited to a 2-week stay as a professor in China. Thanks to platforms like Klimt02 I keep myself informed and I can publish the actions that I am undertaking.


What are your general thoughts on the contemporary jewellery world, (education, market, development...), where do you see chances, and where are dead ends?
This question can generate enmities to me, but I will say what I really think. In the first place, I see in the new generations an aesthetic homogeneity, that is globalization, causing a loss of identity in the artists' work, I see jewels from the two opposite ends of the world that are really very similar, the same materials, the same techniques, and the same concepts.

I believe that countries should not lose their idiosyncrasy, artists should cling to their origins and then find their own form of plastic expression.
It is possible that from the schools they work a lot with references, this causes imitation, I think it is good to nurture the students with the history of art, and even with contemporary jewelers but we must be very careful with this if we want to have genuine artists.

On the other hand, something that I do not quite accept is that they charge you for exhibiting your work. It cannot be that someone sets up an exhibition in a museum and that the artists pay for this, nor do I see fair that art galleries charge you for exhibiting and also have a commission on sales. This supposes that the artist creates the work, pays the materials and other expenses when creating his work, pays the shipping, and pays the stay, it is something totally inconceivable for me.
I only participate in exhibitions and galleries that do not charge me, but I have paid many times to exhibit and by myself, I know what I am talking about.
A very clear example of how I understand this matter is the Melting Point in Valencia, where the artists who are invited exhibit for free, in order to achieve this the organization, that is, the EASD provides the exhibition spaces, all of them public, mostly museums of the city.


Thinking about your career, what role do technology and the digital play in your artistic development & communication?
Communication is somewhat exhausting, the problem for artists with limited resources is that we must create the work, take and edit the photos, take the communication with us (generate the content for Instagram, Facebook and website) write and answer emails, promote the work, applications to exhibitions and contests, manage shipments, write all the literature around our work. In other words, making the jewel is a very small part of the work that you should do.
Regarding technical technology. I am a lover of fusing technology with the manual, for this reason, all my own work is made by hand, to create the forms in titanium, I start from sheets that I forge by hand with tools inherited from my father. But I use TIG welding and electrolytic anodizing for the titanium, this is what I call uniting the modern world with the ancient world.


How has your work changed over the past few years and what are you excited about these days?
I try to do things more calmly, so I participate in fewer events, I have been artistically for two years in which I only do one piece per exhibition and with a great conceptual load.
These days I am moved by the authentic and the austere, I try to pay my attention to the things that go unnoticed.