The magical stones of Adolfo Barnatán

If anything stands out in the sculptural work of Adolfo Barnatán (Paris, 1951) it's the calm physical presence of his artworks, in contrast with their symbolic power, which comes mainly from the evocative force of the circle as a source of perfection.

This cyclical movement matters to the well-known artist. He brings it into his sculptures in the most tangible form of interactivity (many of them can be touched and moved) and, more poetically, through the circular shape and the ideas of unstoppable succession in time and immutability associated with the circle as a symbol.

Heir to the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, Barnatán's sculpture, which at times recalls Arp and Brancusi, has moved towards the abstraction of his Constelaciones from more figurative beginnings, such as the bronzes on mythological themes and with a totemic air in which he references Ancient Egypt and classical Greece through their deities and magical beings. Magic, like form, is something Barnatán has gradually concentrated in his materials, playing with their variety and their qualities (opacity, texture, shine...).

Wood, steel, granite, marble, calatorao stone… and above all obsidian, a stone originally from Mexico that was highly prized by the Mesoamerican cultures of Antiquity and that Barnatán uses in his Constelaciones precisely for those telluric meanings it lends the artwork. It also demands exquisite work of enormous precision from the artist, because although it is very hard, when carved it can be as fragile as glass. Its transformation calls for the perfection the circle evokes.

Barnatán also paints and draws. Before sculpture, at the very beginning, came the pen and ink drawing with which he debuted in his first solo exhibition in Madrid in 1969. In his current output his Papeles Rotos deserve a special place: layers of advertising posters that the artist finds in the streets, tears off the walls and rips apart with his own hands, then sticks onto wood, giving him a canvas on which he paints with acrylics, in a process somewhere between collage and assemblage, with echoes of Arte Povera and Pop. This body of work fits into Barnatán's exploration of volume (thanks to the various layers of paper it would sit between painting and sculpture) and of the semantic possibilities of an artwork, in this case taking on the social charge intrinsic to the advertising and political messages of the posters.

Visit Adolfo Barnatán's gallery at: adolfobarnatan.artelista.com