JUAN FUSTER has a very broad facet as a cultural manager, curator, coordinator and programmer of exhibitions that runs from 2009 to 2022.
One of his achievements was the launch of Mustang Art Gallery and Art Mustang, in the headquarters of the footwear brand MTNG experience, a building in the business park of Elche, Spain, where he managed in a very short time to position the center as a benchmark for young art both in the environment of the province of Alicante and as part of the circuit of young contemporary art in Spain.
It is important to emphasize the value given to the space of the building, an interior hall 11 meters high that connected the rooms of the whole building and which was used under the coordination of Juan Fuster to create site specific installations by young artists that sometimes created international expectation, as in the case of ‘Causa Efecto’ by Ana Soler, where an installation was created that invaded the building like a virus with 2000 tennis balls floating in the air thanks to a complex network of threads. The inflatable and moving sculptures by means of turbines and robotic programming in the exhibition ‘Aire’ by Olga Diego or the neon tube structures by Carlos Coronas in ‘Lampyridae’ but many other exhibitions that created a site specific brand in the building for 10 years, in total more than 44 exhibitions. Juan Fuster’s management also created an endless number of activities with the programming of grants for young artists and their promotion at national and international art fairs and the development of educational programmes for children and young people to bring them closer to contemporary art.
To all this work we must add the initiatives as an independent and alternative art manager, such as his participation in the birth and development of ‘Residencias a quemarropa’ in 2014, the first artistic residency in the Valencian community that imposed a residency model beyond production, generating dialogues between young artists and the different agents of the art sector, such as specialized critics, gallery owners and consolidated artists, more than 50 artists benefited from this project that ended up being financed by the consortium of museums of the Valencian community.
The team of Residencias a Quemarropa during the pandemic created an online residency where artists held workshops for the public under the name of ‘piedra papel Tijera’, later they created the art and sustainability festival ‘OPEN ART FESTIVAL’ to show how the global situation was changing the way artists think and work, its last edition was in 2022.
