MARIÓN ART GALLERY: 10 YEARS: COLLECTIVE

In April 2010, guided by the will and vision of my father, and accompanied by my sister and my mother, we opened a gallery in a space and a country that were then new to us. The role of gallery owners was also new: we had always been on the other side, that of the artist and his studio, accompanying and enabling the production of the work of my grandfather Carlos Cruz-Diez and other artists.

Marión Art Gallery was created at that time as the perfect complement to the Articruz studio, opened a year earlier, with the intention of being both the space to show the public the artworks produced in the studio, as well as the way to bring international artistic proposals to Panama, that until then had not had a presence in the country. That would be our north: show something different, great masters and contemporary proposals that could represent a new starting point for cultural dialogue in the country. Geometric abstraction, Kinetic art and its current derivations, together with a limited selection of photography and other visual media whose inquiries seemed novel and fertile for common discussion.

In addition to Cruz-Diez, the work of Soto and Le Parc, the Italians of Gruppo N, Luis Tomasello, Antonio Asis, Knopp Ferro or Klaus Staudt, photographers such as Liu Bolin, Maia Flore or Kim Kyung Soo, important Venezuelan and Latin American artists such as Rafael Barrios, Elías Crespín, Carlos Medina, Héctor Ramírez, Manuel Ojeda, Leandro Erlich, Darío Escobar or Jose De Oliveira Macaparana, young artists of international relevance such as Felipe Pantone, David Magan, Thomas Witte or Abel Ventoso, and local artists who found in our gallery a space for dissemination and development of their work, such as Cisco Merel, Emmanuel Moses or Damián Hernández, have all passed through our rooms.

We have developed great exhibitions and national and international projects together with the Articruz studio, which go out to the world with the “made in Panama” seal; We have opened our doors to exchange with the country’s cultural ecosystem and actively participated in the creation of cultural initiatives and support for local activities and programs; In short, we have found in Panama a place to create, to say and to grow.

Ten years after that opening exhibition, we celebrate this anniversary by looking back at the journey of a decade of exhibitions, fairs, projects and challenges. We are happy and proud of what we have achieved, but above all grateful to you, our friends, collectors, artists and visitors, who have accompanied us on this path. After this necessary recount, we invite you to continue looking to the future together.