Pablo Barreiro, the architecture of forms that are repeated without major pretensions

With the desire to capture the “architecture of forms” Barreiro works with “set, vulcanized materials.” His words lead us to visualize liquid masses poured into moldsoscillating its balance, vibrating to avoid, or look for, bubbles that will be cavities in its already objectified skin.

Masses that will solidify to be removed, after meticulous and delayed processes. Modeled in negative on whom we imagine having left, at some point, a gesture of our own. Cement masses hardened in plaster moulds.

Layers and more layers, in clay or porcelain (using a 3D printer) that make up porous modular lattices. Turned, pushed, extruded pieces of clay with white ceramic slip or made of reinforced cement, suspended on wall structures, in iron or steel.

Artistic processes, their modes and techniques, are always relevant in the reception of works, in their enjoyment, reading and understanding. But its importance becomes fundamental when we talk about sculptural processes.

Perhaps, for be transformers of matterfor the necessary study of its specificities, for the succession of unforeseen discoveries, for its accidents or for its losses. Perhaps, because of his constant rehearsals.

In Pablo Barreiro’s career we find transfers of elements confined in spheres of traditionin the field of functional pottery (we think of the use of Buño clay, one of the main living focuses of Galician pottery), we can confirm the persistence of architectural materials and manufactures (such as the use of reinforced cement) and we share the problematization of repetition and seriality, which make their objects converge into architectures.

Faced with the pieces made of reinforced cement and plaster, where mold and object coexist, we think of the architecture made in the seventies in Spain and its concrete textures, the search for light solutions so that the heavy becomes light and modular.

And we walked through the city. We reread pavements and vertical parameters. We value your sobriety. We linger before traces of formwork, before modular elements, before organic mortars that make us return to the exhibition because as Rafael Espejo, quoted here by Barreiro, wrote: “Often I’m not where my body fulfills its functions.”