Sculpture Magazine – review by Lic. María Carolina Baulo published both in printed and web edition january 2012
As a personal seal, the sculptor, installer and performer Juan Miceli, presents himself as “I am my work”; without him, the art work per se doesn´t exist. Miceli thinks in terms of projects, he imagines worlds and works without a previous schedule, formal organization or model; the strategy is a consequence of the inspiration the materials transmit to him– animal bones, teeth and plastic dispensable objects – when he faces them. It is then when something, canalized through the materials, seems to speak to him and it is his intuition the one who guides him to create an entire world inhabited by fantastic beings which are nothing but the artist´s alter egos. Miceli submerges into the natural flow and he flows with it, he steps away from his own murmuring and the one around, gets seduced and penetrated by the unpredictable influence of creativity and as the man reborn over and over again, his art materializes. “I understand art as a way of looking/seeing and fundamentally as a practice; a way of life (…) through my artistic production I can´t help questioning the world around us and our culture”. His sculptures propose a deep reflection about human nature, the relationship we establish with the environment and the struggle to walk away of the increscent tendency of turning our habitat into a robotic world. Miceli defies the “politically correct” cultural mandates; he battles with the strength of a weapon such as declassification and the power inherent to imagination. He subverts the natural order of things, recovers wastes and bones to immortalize them creating sculptures which build huge installations, where they assume a new meaning which rescues them from oblivion and death. Some sort of memento mori where those things who were destined to ostracism, turn into the protagonists of a new story. A main resource in Juan Miceli´s work is the constant inspiration he finds in the ocean. This is how far the genesis which fundaments his choices, could be track: a space where the artist plays, imagines, creates and discovers, since he was a kid, other primitive, early and previous worlds which transcend him even when he decides to appropriate them. Within that “personal ocean”, amorphous creatures with threatening appearance gestate, as attractive as frightening. With a large career as art director, editor and costume designer in cinematography, radio and publicity, during 2010 the artist participated of several exhibitions where his sculptures and installations highlighted: Miceli: theverybestia (Wallrod – Arte Space), Fuga Lab (Objeto a Gallery) y Miceliliveperformance (United for Argentina campaign, sponsored by Puma). His next project is the Miceli | Brutalia installation, December 2010-Februeary 2011 at the “Garden of Sculptures Museum” in the city of Buenos Aires. The multifaceted talent of the argentine artist, surprises because of the standard of compromise that supports his art, a communion which bonds concepts with facts and rationalism with the empirical experience: Miceli carries out what he thinks and becomes what he performs.