Office of the President
Wings of the City
Jorge Marin | September 2024 - August 2025
At the heart of the Center for Creativity and the Arts at Fresno State is a commitment to nurturing grassroots talent and providing invaluable hands-on experiences for aspiring artists and curators. Through exposure to art and culture on our campus, students and our greater community can explore new avenues of creativity that will shape their professional trajectories.
That’s why Fresno State is excited to host the Wings of the City exhibit. Featuring five monumental bronze sculptures, Wings of the City allows art to expand beyond the walls of museums and galleries and become embedded into our community. The exhibit promotes art as a universal language and a bond between countries and their people.
Created by Jorge Marín, Wings of the City was originally exhibited in Marín's home country of Mexico. In 2013, it began its journey through the United States, with stops in Texas, Colorado, South Carolina and Southern California.
Jorge Marín’s art is disruptive and challenges us to seek our own inner reflection and aesthetic experience. Sculpture, unlike other arts, offers us the possibility of facing three dimensions, making it an inexhaustible vehicle of expression. With a career spanning more than 25 years, Marín has become an outstanding representative of contemporary figurative sculpture, both in Mexico and in the world.
He was born in Uruapan, Michoacán (Mexico) in 1963, and studied Graphic Design at ENAP-UNAM and later Restoration of Fine Arts at the Manuel del Castillo Negrete National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography, of INAH. Over the years, his work has expanded beyond exhibition halls and private collections, now forming part of the urban landscape in streets and squares around the world.
He has participated in more than 320 group and solo exhibitions. His work, in addition to Mexico, has been exhibited in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Canada, and the United States, Germany, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, France, Hungary, England, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan.
In 2010, Jorge Marín exhibited thirteen monumental sculptures on Paseo de la Reforma, one of the most emblematic sites of Mexico City, in order to bring them closer to people, exposing them to touch, sight and direct interaction of passers-by. Since then, his work and his search as a sculptor have been enriched by the interest of reaching an increasingly diverse public.
In 2017, the Jorge Marín Foundation was created with the purpose of carrying out projects of a social nature that involve art as a means to invite reflection, interaction and the restoration of the social fabric.
Since 2013, Wings of The City has traveled through 12 cities across the United States, generating an iconic reference to the interaction between the spectators and the exhibition space. These works were first installed in 2010 in Mexico City, when Jorge Marín decided to make his art available to a broader audience, by leaving the museum walls and going into the public space.
Through this project, many dialogues have been established between Mexican contemporary art and a very diverse population, contributing to an awareness of the challenges of migration and other living cultures.
Nowadays, the United States has become a second home for the sculptures, where the communities embrace them and intertwine with. These monumental sculptures intend to provide a sense of identity for current and future generations, through educational and outreach programs that the institutions, together with the Jorge Marín Foundation, make possible.
El Abrazo Monumental
2006 | 7.2 x 6.9 x 2.1 ft
An intimate moment of absolute compassion and devotion. Two bodies that strive to become one. In this sculpture, a winged man holds a woman who seems to be slipping away from her, as if he's witnessing her last breath from her in a moment of transcendence.
El Tiempo
2010 | 6.0 x 7.8 x 5.5 ft
Observers of this sculpture are left to wonder whether it is building itself or dissolving by its age. The composition, modeled in Classical proportions, reminds us of archeological ruins; broken objects that wait for us to tell the story behind them.
Bernardo Oriental
2006 | 7.8 x 8.5 x 3.2 ft
Part of a series of winged creatures, this sculpture possesses unique characteristics, such as the position of the body, as if captured at the moment it is about to stand and take flight. Upon his head is an aviator's hat; the dream of flying materialized into the human condition.
Equilibrista 90 Monumental
2005 | 3.9 x 1.5 x 4.2 ft
Able to perform actions and movements that seem impossible, this sculpture symbolizes the perfection of the human body. The mask invites us to project ourselves onto it as it reminds us of the coexistence between humans and their environment.
Angel Persélidas Monumental
2009 | 8.3 x 8.5 x 2.6 ft
The name of this sculpture reminds us of the Perseids, an annual meteor shower named for the constellation Perseus. In this winged being, we might find the delicacy of those meteors, symbolizing a union between heaven and earth, the divine and the human.
