Juan Carlos Rayas

Biografía

Juan Carlos Rayas develops a sculptural practice situated at the intersection of the Arte Povera tradition and contemporary eco-sculptural approaches.

Unlike historical artists such as Giuseppe Penone, whose work reveals the internal processes of natural growth, Rayas works with matter already transformed by time — eroded wood, fragments marked by drought or the action of insects — extending these traces through sculptural interventions in stone.

His work enters into dialogue with contemporary practices that explore materiality and nature, such as those of Henrique Oliveira and Katie Paterson, yet distinguishes itself through an intimate and restrained approach, where scale and manual gesture reinforce the poetic dimension of the work.

In his sculptures, stone does not impose itself upon wood; rather, it emerges from it as a symbolic continuation, generating a tension between the ephemeral and the enduring. This fusion places his practice within a singular territory in contemporary sculpture, where the work does not represent nature,