In addition to his paintings and ceramics, Barceló is highly regarded for his works on paper, which include drawings, prints, sketchbooks, artist’s books, and illustrated books. This exhibition, his first at the Artur Ramon gallery, focuses on his prints, presenting around thirty works, all produced at the workshop of Joan Roma and Takeshi Motomiya in Barcelona between 2010 and 2026. These prints develop some of the artist’s characteristic themes, including vanitas; marine beings such as fish, crustaceans, and octopuses; plants and landscapes; animals; portraits of renowned writers; and a self-portrait.
Barceló explores all possible printmaking techniques, investigating their specific characteristics: aquatint, etching, woodcut, lithography, carborundum, roller, screen printing, varnish, collage, etc. He often combines several of these techniques within a single work, maintaining a constant experimental drive and remaining open even to the possibility of accidents. He has used, for example, organic and mineral elements such as seeds and mica. Roma and Motomiya, for their part, are known for their technical virtuosity, particularly in their use of color, achieving unusual chromatic ranges.
The exhibition also presents three artist’s books: Sobre la apariencia de las cosas, with poems by Enrique Juncosa, curator of the exhibition; Dins la panxa del bou, a book without text; and Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée (2025) by Guillaume Apollinaire, produced in Paris.
