Sal Mallen

About

Sal Mallen

Europe

Sal Mallen (Salvador Mallen i Civit, born 12 June 1972 in Tarragona) is a Catalan artist working across sculpture, painting, drawing, illustration and furniture design. His work explores aesthetics and beauty, and he is also active as a human rights defender.

Education. After a difficult start in a traditional Catholic school under the Franco dictatorship, Mallen found his way through technology: he qualified as a specialist technician in industrial drafting and went on to study Industrial Design Engineering at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. He then earned a five-year degree in Fine Arts (Licenciatura en Bellas Artes) from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Sant Carles, Universitat Politècnica de València, where he is pursuing doctoral research in contemporary art.

Early sculpture (1986–2002). Mallen sold his first artwork at fourteen. In 1995, while still an engineering student, he created the monumental sculpture "Dona dominant el cel i la terra" (Woman Dominating Sky and Earth), a partly buried concrete face that stands for women's strength and equality. It won the university's sculpture prize and is now in the Universitat Jaume I art collection. In these years he also worked on realist drawing and on design, including collaborations with jewellery designers, and in 2000 he was selected for the Premio Joven de Artes Plásticas exhibition in Madrid. His first solo exhibition, "Trossets de vida. Desig i realitat" (Bits of Life: Desire and Reality, Castelló, 2002), turned the gallery into an immersive space: a black-ink wall painting surrounded by painted swallows, a large realist painting of a sleeping woman with handwritten poems by Antoni Albalat, and dozens of small life drawings of friends and lovers. The show also stirred controversy when a father inadvertently revealed his daughter's identity.

Design and public space (2003–2009). Mallen won two awards at Cevisama, the international ceramics fair in Valencia: second prize in 2003 for the project "Imagina", and in 2006 first prize in the Indistile International Industrial Design competition for his undulating tile "Vida". His work turned towards a Zen-inspired expressionism: he illustrated "Tords", a book of poems by Antoni Albalat on birds (Ajuntament de l'Alcora), and in 2008 showed his monotype series "Colors" in Castelló. Because of the artist's political and environmental statements, the opening date of "Colors" had to be changed so that it would not coincide with the elections, and the original posters had to be reprinted. His largest public work, "Espai cúbic" (Cubic Space), commissioned by the City of Castelló and installed in 2009 at the entrance to the Universitat Jaume I, is a group of seven tilted cubes, up to nine metres high: four clad in aluminium inside the roundabout and three in stainless steel around it. Some sink into the ground while others balance on a vertex, and a hidden reflective system makes their surfaces change colour with the light and the viewer's position.

Central Europe (2009–2016). Mallen worked between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, producing a limited series of furniture. In 2010 the Bea Laufersweiler Museum in Baden-Baden showed his landscapes in "Von Miró zum Mallén". In 2012 he co-founded ARTgallery Essen in Essen-Werden, which presented his series "Cuines" (Kitchens), "Landscapes", "Sumi-e" and "Sommer", among other shows. His large kitchen painting "Cuina de l'Ana, l'Ana Belén i el plat de bajoques" was shown in Germany in 2013 and 2014. In 2014 he exhibited at the Parallax Art Fair in London and began an interdisciplinary collaboration with musicians, dancers and choreographers from the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Catalonia (since 2017). In 2017 Mallen returned to Catalonia to support the independence referendum and moved his studio back to his native Tarragona. Since 2021 he has taught art and design at the Escola d'Art i Disseny de Reus (EADR).

Across all these disciplines, Mallen's work aims to dissolve the boundary between art and its surroundings, inviting viewers to step inside the work rather than look at it from outside.