Javier Viver (Madrid, 1971) is an sculptor, photographer, designer and photobook editor.
Ph. D. in Fine Arts, Complutense University of Madrid with the doctoral thesis Val del Omar Laboratory (2008), published by Cameo as a documental film. For that purpose he spent two researching years at the VdO PLAT Laboratory before it was finally dismantled. He was commissioned, with Javier Ortíz-Echagüe, to install it in the Reina Sofía National Museum of Art (2008).
His work debates between document and fiction as way to see the invisible. His work ESpHeM (2001) is about a fictional company of ephemeral architecture which proposes the use of packaging systems to inhabit the world and it was shown internationally at the Reina Sofia National Museum of Art, Madrid; the Queens Museum of Arts, New York; La Recoleta, Buenos Aires or the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, among others.
Recently he has published the photobook Révélations with RM, awarded as the best book of art of the year, by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. It is new edition of the Iconography of La Salpêtrière, the famous hospital in Paris.
In 2002 he was honored with the Botín Fundation award in Location One, New York; in 2001 with The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Award in the Spanish Academy in Rome and the Madrid Fine Arts Circle program in Hangar, Barcelona; in 2012 he received the invitation from the Swatch Art Center to live and work in Shanghai.
His work is part of important museums and collections as the Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid; Queens Museum of Arts, New York; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain; Location 1, New York; Caja Madrid Foundation; Botín Foundation, Santander; Swatch Group Collection.
