Malaga-born Javier Calleja heads into the city streets with his art

Javier Calleja’s art has taken to the streets of Malaga city, after the international artist unveiled his first open-air sculpture in Spain. The five-metre-high artwork presides over the entrance of Calle Molina Lario, near the cathedral.

Heads V2 is a large-scale version of one of Calleja’s most popular works, a tower of five heads of various sizes and different facial expressions. But they have one thing in common: huge, bright eyes like those of a child smiling after a crying fit. Made of bronze, acrylic glass, urethane paint, steel and stainless steel, it is a street-level celebration of the artist’s return to Malaga more than a decade after his previous project in the city.

It is the largest sculpture Calleja has made to date and the placing of the street sculpture coincides with his exhibition Mr Günter, The Cat Show, which is at the cultural centre of the Unicaja foundation until 6 September.

Heads V2, which weighs 5,700 kilos, is on temporary loan to Malaga from the artist’s Nanzuka Underground gallery in Tokyo. And that is where the tradition started, Calleja would display his work in the streets every time he opened a new exhibition at his gallery.

Back in March, Calleja opened the most ambitious exhibition of his career at the Unicaja foundation cultural centre in Malaga. It includes 209 works (including 23 canvases and 25 sculptures, plus drawings and exclusive editions of ‘art toys’) from 20 different collections across seven European and, above all, Asian countries, where the impact of his art has reached dizzying figures.

A total of 95 people and 17 companies worked on the project.

Calleja is in the process of completing his first individual exhibition in London, with twenty paintings and drawings, and it is set to open its doors on 1 June at Almine Rech London.

He will then turn to Art Basel (15 to 18 June), an important international art fair in which almost 200 galleries and 4,000 artists from the five continents participate.

Calleja will also return to Frieze Seoul (September) and London (October), to end the year with a solo exhibition at Aishonanzuka Hong Kong (November) and Art Basel Miami (December).