If you visit Guadalajara and walk along Paseo Alcalde, between the churches of San Francisco and Aranzazú, you may come across five bronze figures that seem to stand in silence while life passes them by. They have no eyes, mouth, or ears, but their posture suggests they are doing something that is becoming increasingly rare in a city: stopping to observe. Who is the creator of these humanoid-like figures that impassively observe the bustle of Guadalajara? Behind them is Adrián Guerrero Castellanos (Guadalajara, 1975), an artist whose work straddles abstraction, philosophy, and the exploration of perception.
Throughout his career, he has worked with materials such as ceramics and bronze and has exhibited his work in Mexico and other countries, while exploring themes such as time, form, scale, and our relationship with objects and space.
We talked with him about philosophy, perception, ceramics, public art, and what happens when a work of art ceases to belong to the artist and begins to become part of other people’s lives.
How do you relate philosophy to art?
Perhaps it would be too pretentious to say that I do that. I think it’s an attempt to reconcile two of my passions. One is making art—that is, my visual art—and the other is philosophy; it’s something I’ve always been passionate about.
Do you have a background in philosophy as well as architecture and art?
I’ve loved it ever since I was in school, but later I had the opportunity to pursue a master’s degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Jesuit School in Guadalajara. That reshaped me, so to speak—or, why not say it—it propelled me a little further into the big leagues of philosophy.
So, that’s exactly what I do with my work. Although if you look at my work at first glance—the titles and all that—it’s not exactly as if they were discussing, for example, the philosophy of Socrates. I’m not that obvious; rather, depending on the issue I’m exploring, I always approach it from a philosophical perspective. I always draw on authors; I’m always reading philosophy, and as a result, there’s a tremendous amount of it in my work. As I said, it might not be obvious, because I don’t really care for obviousness.
Of course. I don’t think the obvious is ever a good thing in art. You always have to ask questions, challenge yourself, and never take anything for granted.
I actually think that one of my passions in my work is to appeal to human perception. Human perception is something I’ve been exploring for quite some time throughout my career.
Should a work of art convey a sense of belonging?
When an artist releases a work, it ultimately ceases to be theirs. The work itself is what stirs something in the viewer. It may evoke disinterest, rejection—whatever you want—but there comes a point when works take on a life of their own and appeal to each person’s individual perception. That’s thrilling. I think it’s one of the great virtues of art.
I wanted to talk about the materials. To appeal to that perception you mentioned, the materials are also a key element, aren’t they?
Yes. In my case, I started my career in ceramics. It was like my first craft—something I ended up doing because of my dad. But ceramics is a craft with many virtues and consequences, one of which is that, in the end, the fire either approves your work or it doesn’t. In other words, you put a piece in the kiln, and after you’ve worked on it for weeks, the kiln can ruin it or bring it to life.
After that game with frustration—for the better—it made me take the leap, or forced me to take the leap, into painting, photography, bronze casting, and other crafts where I might have had more tangible confidence in the outcome.
I also notice that your work has been featured in many exhibitions around the world: in Italy, in Spain, and in other parts of Mexico, such as Oaxaca. How do you feel that perception you’re talking about changes in Mexico, in Oaxaca, in your own city of Guadalajara, or when you travel to another country or region?
Well, that’s exactly where this joy comes from—being able to—and I’m very grateful for the opportunity—to take my work on the road and see how it resonates with different cultures. There’s a quote I really like by Antonio Pau that goes: “Everywhere we go, we see what we carry inside.”
So I think the play is perceived completely differently in the East than in the West. You can really see that difference there, especially because of their worldview and their way of, let’s say, relating to the world.
That’s interesting because you’re also bringing geography into it there, aren’t you?
Yes, and then it confirms things. For example, three or four months ago I had my first solo exhibition in Madrid. I had the chance to be there for the opening and everything, and it also helped me realize how similar Spain and Mexico are—that is, Madrid and Guadalajara—in terms of how we interpret art and how we view it.
Your work *Los Contemplarios* was the one that first caught my attention.
“Los Contemplarios ” consists of five bronze sculptures, each two meters tall, along with ten steel plaques placed on the ground in my city’s Historic District. It is now a permanent installation; in other words, it is already part of the collection of the people of Guadalajara.
For me, it was a huge challenge: an analysis of the space, but also a social analysis, to determine where the best place to install it was. I’m very happy that we were finally able to make it happen. This is the first time in my career that I’ve been able to create a public artwork that will remain there forever. It’s like moving from a gallery to a museum and from a museum to public art.
As you said at the beginning of the interview, it ceases to belong to the individual and, in this case, does not pass to the collector, but rather to the public sphere itself.
I think that’s where the value of this series lies, because my pieces end up in collections, in homes, in private spaces accessible only to those who acquired them, or often in a museum where they reach a certain audience. But here, it’s aimed at the ordinary passerby. That interaction with the artwork is important.
How did this project come about?
The ” Los Contemplarios ” project began on a very small scale. It’s the only piece—let’s say—in the shape of a human being that I work on. All my work is abstract, and this is the only piece that allows for that.
So it came about in reverse: it grew out of small sculptures I’ve been creating for much of my career. Then I made a couple of castings in those sizes; I’ve done four or five now. After that initial trial, it took me eight years of working to ensure that my work would finally find its way into the public space.
Speaking briefly about the work, I see that there are five figures, all of which lack facial features. What was the idea behind removing their identities?
The idea is simply a very abstract, very neutral figure—in the sense that there are no eyes, no mouth, no ears, nothing that personalizes it per se—but, from my perspective, it has the basic elements to convey that it is a human being.
And did that pose have symbolic meaning, or was it just for aesthetic reasons?
They are positioned so that they are gazing out at the city. In other words, they are in this state of continuous pause, taking advantage of the fact that they are made of bronze, that they are motionless, that they are simply there. They are simply taking that moment to gaze out at the city in which they are situated.
And, in turn, on the floor—as you approach it at random—there are steel plaques with words like “peace,” “silence,” and “contemplation”; mere words that serve to evoke exactly what these characters are doing there on the street.
It’s a spiritual work, in a way. That’s how I see it, but you’re the artist…
Look, you put it so well, because that’s really what this whole issue of human perception is all about. I’d say it works in two ways. One is what you mentioned—the spiritual aspect. In fact, it might seem like they’re wearing a chasuble or something religious, but I wanted to keep it very neutral in terms of that aspect of contemplation—giving us a moment of pause from a spiritual, rather than a religious, perspective. That’s why I wanted to make it universal.
“On the other hand, there is this philosophical weight to the idea of pausing, which seems like a very fine line: pausing, observing—that moment of looking, of determining reality.”
Doesn’t the play on words in *Los Contemplarios* have something to do with the Knights Templar?
Nothing like that. It’s contemplation, contemplation.
Is this a one-off work, or do you plan to expand it into a series?
I haven’t really thought about it that way. I love the idea. For me, it would be the best thing ever to have a contemplatory in Madrid as a mirror.
The pieces that brought you to Madrid are something else entirely, aren’t they?
This is a project in which I specifically analyzed a work by José Clemente Orozco called *Pueblo Mexicano*. José Clemente Orozco usually works in a purely figurative style, but he suddenly created a series featuring geometric forms. I focus on those geometric forms in particular. I take that piece from *Pueblo Mexicano*, isolate the pure geometry, and set out to analyze all the geometric forms he includes there.
Also, I understand that those pieces are related to a historical moment in Mexico
It was just when Clemente Orozco was in New York, attending a group of artists and intellectuals called the Delphic Circle, that he came across all these canons and Greek principles of proportion, of vectors in drawing, and of geometry. And that particular piece from *Pueblo Mexicano*, Luis Barragán copied. He literally had a copy made, enlarged it, and hung it in his studio in Mexico City.
What did that story reveal to you?
I realized how the proportions that José Clemente painted—and included in that lithograph—have had a tremendous influence on modern and contemporary architecture in Mexico, because they are embedded in the collective consciousness of all the architects who have visited the Luis Barragán House and Studio. The exhibition is called *Orden Inquieto* (Restless Order), which I organized in Madrid, but I call this particular piece *Dónde está el pueblo* (Where Is the People?).
