Galeria Mayoral company logo
Galeria Mayoral
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Art Fairs
  • Publications
  • Collect
  • Magazine
  • About
Menu

Barquero. Müladar: Barcelona

Past exhibition
3 - 9 September 2025
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Related Artists
Overview
Barquero. Müladar, Barcelona

"They are images that may speak of ancient Babylon, but they may also speak of the present moment. The image returns again and again."

- Barquero

A body —or a corpse?— in a recumbent position, face up, with the palm of the hand visibly open, cyclopean and tense, like a battered root. Is it a hand that gives, that wants to give itself? What does it offer? Maybe a life that deserts the body that hosted it? As we live, we are transmitters of life. And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.


First it was necessary to find a place to leave the corpse, ideally in a mountainous area, close to a temple or a stupa. Since time immemorial, the Tibetans had loaded the cut-up bodies of friends and lovers, of masters and disciples, onto the circular path toward the renewal of life. With chants and prayers, they delivered the body of the deceased to the vultures, which devoured it with inhuman and blind piety. With the arrival of death, the soul departed and the body became an empty shell. The final act of worldly generosity was to become food for the birds, a way of turning the wheel of the law and accepting terrestrial impermanence.
Wounded hands which embrace and receive, which wrap up and provide shelter in a devastated world.


And what is it to write a poem, to paint a picture, if not an offering, alms for a stranger? A web of voices / pronounced for no one.
The hand is the beginning of giving. All gifts come from the hands: the present for the child, the help for the elderly, the brushstroke and the caress.
So, the work of art is nothing but deduction, subtraction, a way of losing and squandering. Not expecting anything from this gift. Offering the image like a corpse, like the remains of a gesture which once belonged to you; a festival of deprivation, of abandonment. This corpse no longer says anything about you, but feeds others.


Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
A figure wearing a red tunic loads a pale and helpless being. Their hands are vessels of tenderness. A horizon of fire pursues them. The city burns, disaster is imminent, hope of escape is all that is left. On the other side of the painting, the vultures await.

 

The vultures are us: the public. Birds of prey which fly in circles over the works —the corpses— that the artist throws onto the pile, still warm with meaning.

 

The vultures live off these remains of conscience, off this shapeless and rotting thread of life which decomposes on the mountain grass.
Agonizing with attention, the artist says: drink from my blood, feed on my renunciations till hunger earth and sky be offal.


Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool,
or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not…

Installation Views
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
  • Photo credit: Robert Ruiz
    Photo credit: Robert Ruiz

Related artist

  • José Luis Barquero

    José Luis Barquero

Back to exhibitions

Join our mailing list

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.

PARIS

 

36 Avenue Matignon, 75008 Paris

 

View Map

 

Tuesday to Friday  

10.30 h. to 13.00 h.

14.00 h. to 19.00 h.

 

Saturday

13.00 h. - 18.00 h.

  

 Closed:

· From 23/12/2025 to 03/01/2026

 

 

 paris@galeriamayoral.com

+33 1 42 99 61 78 

BARCELONA

 

Consell de Cent 286, 08007 Barcelona

 

View Map

 

Monday to Friday  

10.30 h. to 14.00 h.

15.30 h. to 19.30 h. 

 

Saturday

11.00 h. - 14.00 h.

 

Closed:

· 27/12/2025

· From 29/12/2025 to 01/01/2026

  

info@galeriamayoral.com

+34 934 880 283 

Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Manage cookies
Copyright © Galeria Mayoral 2023
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Find out more about cookies.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences
Close

Join our mailing list

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.