Proyecto Barreño

Charity Exhibition
Madrid
14.12.2207.01.23
Press
Press release
PROYECTO BARREÑO_ES PROYECTO BARREÑO_EN

On July 26th 2020, Boticaria García was on vacation and had to improvise a support that would support the filming material that she had to use in her afternoon live show.

A bucket with white fretwork that had been hidden in a closet for decades was useful. After the live show, la boticaria’s instagram was full with photographs of buckets that came out of the ostracism of hundreds of homes to come back to life in the form of memories. For her followers, the buckets became a path of telling their beautiful stories. These vernacular objects were used by our elders in their work: to make the dough for the chorizos, remove the hanging clothes or pick the potatoes, even mending them to prolong their useful life. They were precious goods that were even part of the trousseau of the brides and those of us born before the 80’s have dabbled in them, brightening the lifes of our grandmothers. Beautiful pre-pandemic stories. Human stories.

Just a few days after her live show, the first bucket arrived at the boticaria’s house with the first letter and a story inextricably linked to it. Then another came with another letter, and another, and another, until reaching almost two hundred. Among them we can find icons of national industrial design such as the Cisne mop bucket with its tricorn-shaped wringer that, made of plastic, replaced the metal bucket that Rodex popularized in 1957; or the children’s kitchenware set from the Denox house.

The exhibition at Maisterravalbuena shows a selection of the buckets that boticaria has received over the last two years. Next to them, hanging on the walls, you can see and read some of the letters with beautiful hidden stories.

Contrary to what usually happens in art galleries, none of these objects are for sale. For the occasion, the artist Jacobo Castellano has made a drawing inspired by the buckets; thousands of numbered posters signed by the artist have been printed from this drawing and will be sold at the gallery and at the Christmas market in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor. Each poster has a value of 25 € and all the profits from the purchase will be donated entirely to the Hogar de menores Sagrada Familia de la Fundación Acrescere.

Proyecto Barreño is the result of the generosity and sensitivity of hundreds of people capable of seeing symbolic qualities in an object in obvious disuse that transcend the strictly functional. Useless objects. Beautiful objects.

Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain
Proyecto Barreño, 2022. Exhibition view, Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain