Emotional power projects into the room. It is magnificence, soul, dignity, profound strength, compassion and suffering. I am aware of it as I enter the Nohra Haime Gallery in New York City. It was 1998 and I had just stumbled upon my first viewing of Javier Marins figurative clay sculptures. The facial expressions and clay surfaces are brutalized, scratched, drilled, slips poured and splattered. Great slabs of clay have been gorgeously modeled, torn, fragmented and rejoined with steel and cement. They appear to have been dragged through the front pages of a modern atrocity. As Javier Marin says I am happy-anguished. They might be gods, dancers and athletes of contemporary angst. They teeter toward nostalgia and are checked by the artists expressive power. Are we looking at beauty brutalized or suffering sublimated?

The facial features are ethnic. The skin colors are the earth tones of earth cultures, the color of clay. These might be the Aztecs or Mayas of Marins native Mexico, who have suffered the loss of their golden empire. If these are the faces of the Native people of Mexico, they have been shaped in the style of Spanish Baroque sculpture. Possibly they speak for many people of the world who have too quickly and too violently been pressed into the modern age.

There are aspects of Marins art that are modern. But there are distinctions. Artists such as Duchamp, DeKooning, Kitaj, Pollock, Beuys, Hesse and Kienholz, point to the irony of modernity. Not long ago, the human condition was considered beautiful, tragic and heroic. That ended with Rodin, smashed by the Fauves and Cubists among many others. In spite of our self-proclaimed rise to the summit of civilization, modern art addresses perversity, decay, degradation, insecurity and despair. Consumerism defines our social status and gives us purpose. Incongruous with our achievements and symptomatic of our decline, we are told, Go shopping. In effect, what we own is who we are. What if, instead, we were defined by our ability to provide protection, bounty and wisdom, as was the case with the indigenous people of Mexico?

Javier Marins approach to sculpture is direct, not cushioned by irony. Like North American and European contemporary artists, he is speaking about decline. But there is a direct and subtle message, in that he approaches the work from dual perspectives. His sculptures reveal both a degradation of beauty and the beauty of suffering in dignity. They contain two perspectives just as the synthesis of two cultures might result in two very different interpretations of historical events. His aesthetic is uniquely Mexican, I believe. Duality is everywhere in these works. The classical anatomy is opposed to the aggressive, confident handling of the clay, which is modern and Voulkos like. The figures have powerful musculature and large features yet are often balanced lightly on their toes, their fingers and hair are modeled with great delicacy.

Clay is an extremely smart choice of medium for this work. Clay has qualities of fragility under tension and great strength under pressure, so it suggests conflicting duality by its nature. Clay is the earth. It is used in these sculptures to represent people with a very intimate and sophisticated relationship with the earth. For those same cultures, terra-cotta sculpture was pervasive and held a place of distinction. Clay has the right color, feel and association and is key to the success of Javier Marins expression.

As I look at these ceramic sculptures, I am impressed, literally pressed, by their emanation of power and beauty. Marin has found a way to make the atmosphere ripple with emotion. It has to do with his skill with the clay, anatomy, distortion and scale. But Marins ability to animate space goes beyond his technical skill. It is the mysterious and defining aspect of a master that he is able to use the medium of clay to enliven the space it occupies.