SALSERA: This Salsa or Food Serving Station, is from the collection SHI HO II, by the artist Julio Martínez Barnetche. Handcarved of volcanic rock and ash wood from Zacualpan de Amilpas, Morelos.
The direct stone carvers belong to a genre that is disappearing. Julio Martínez Barnetche's work is a display of technical mastery combined with creative fluidity that reveals the aesthetics hidden, buried in the crystalline structure of the stone. Recognized in the first decade of the 21st century as a pioneer in direct carving of precious stones, Julio Martínez Barnetche continues to push the three-dimensional limits of modernism to new levels.
Julio Martínez Barnetche plays with the limitless color formations of nature and the plasticity of figurative and non-objective forms, revealed through his chiseling and carving of large jade and other stones. His forms, in some cases, evoke creatures resembling small microorganisms and plants submerged underwater, while others indicate various shapes—some recognizable and others left to the imagination. This leaves us with a wide range of interpretation between the known and the unknown.
