Jacobo Castellano "El espacio entre los dedos" at Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid

Jacobo Castellano - El espacio entre los dedos

Opening Reception
Thursday Sep 12, 6 PM - 9 PM

The Sala Alcalá 31 presents El espacio entre los dedos , an exhibition that brings together some of the works created over the last twenty years by Jacobo Castellano, along with other new works that delve into his own artistic experience based on autobiographical memory. 

The exhibition is a reflection on how, through the pictorial language, Castellano reaches the sculptural language and also on all those concepts that revolve around artistic practice, such as balance and tension between forms, the use of different materials or the Western history of painting itself. 

The space between the fingers is presented as a journey through sculptural and pictorial works that condense some of the formal and material characteristics of Castellano's work, such as the use of wood, the insertion of certain objects in his pieces and painting on canvas. In addition, in this exhibition, the artist returns to the technique of painting, which he had abandoned during his academic training after being poisoned. 

In this sense, Castellano, as part of the work process for this exhibition, has visited the Museo del Prado on a weekly basis, using the most outstanding paintings in this gallery –mainly by Goya and Zurbarán- as an exercise in observation and a necessary learning tool to approach the pictorial language, which is reflected in the paintings he exhibits in El espacio entre los dedos. The artist has carefully studied the details and has incorporated them into his works through symbolic games in dialogue with the sculptural practice. 

The exhibition begins through two doors that recreate on a larger scale those designed by Secundino Zuazo, the architect who built La Casa de las Flores, the artist's current residence, in Madrid in 1931. In this way, it generates a nod to his autobiography, since this is not the first time that Jacobo Castellano has used family memory and recollection to produce some of his works. 

The title of the exhibition, El espacio entre los dedos , refers to a children's game that consists of making the thumb disappear from the hand, a clear reference to the meaning of play and toys in Castellano's work. In this way, the artist shows his fondness for reconstructing objects and the sense of breaking and rebuilding that, through different object associations, is very present in this exhibition.