JAVIER ARCE
Santander, Spain, 1973
Received the Fundación Botín Art Grant in 2006

Compartimentación de daños/disfunción en los árboles (Compartmentalisation of Tree Damage/Dysfunction), 2025.
Wood chips, gypsum
Fundación Botín Collection. Acquired 2025.

For several years now, Javier's artistic production has departed from the natural and social context of the shepherd's hut in the mountains of Cantabria where he lives with his family, developing a relationship with the landscape that is as formal as it is collaborative and vital.

The vertical sculptural Compartimentación de daños/disfunción en los árboles is a second cast of a tree nearby Javier's house that the artist thought was dead until a biologist friend found that the tree was closing the wounds from bird pecks. The title of the work refers to the model that botanists have studied to understand the defence of trees, which indicates when a tree is wounded and when it begins to barricade itself to contain any infection.