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

Cambium, 2023
Wood chips, gypsum
200 cm. ø
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 horizontal sculpture Cambium is a cast of a ‘stump’ from a Monterey cypress tree planted in 1864, which belonged to a neighbour in the village near his cottage. Javier placed this stump on his land and, over time, what looked like a dead trunk transformed into the heart of his garden where plants and wildflowers have found their space, and friends and family have gathered, chatting and even dancing. Javier has made this mould of the last ring of the stump – the most recent one just below the bark. The delicate layer between the bark and the wood is known as the cambium, and it is responsible for the tree's growth. Here new wood cells are formed, which are then deposited on top of the previously formed layers, making it the only layer of the trunk that is truly alive.