Until November 1st, Mai 36 Galerie presents GRAFT, the second solo exhibition by Spanish artist Jacobo Castellano (b. 1976, Jaén), bringing together recent and earlier works that extend his longstanding investigation into memory, matter, and the emotional charge of everyday objects. Working primarily with found, inherited, and salvaged materials—often drawn from rural or domestic contexts—Castellano constructs sculptural configurations that are formally restrained yet conceptually dense. Each work operates as a kind of quiet excavation, where the spiritual, political, personal, and historical coexist in fragile equilibrium.
His approach is defined by a deep respect for the autonomy of materials. Rather than transforming or aestheticizing them, Castellano builds structures around objects to allow them to resonate on their own terms. In Paisaje de Jaén (2025), for instance, a dark wooden sculpture filled with olive oil becomes a tactile portrait of his Andalusian birthplace—its surface slowly altered by the seepage of oil, suggesting time’s passage and the persistence of place. In Rombo Detente (2025), four mismatched triangles of wood form a loose rhombus, enclosing a “detente” amulet—an object of spiritual protection used during the Spanish Civil War—subtly invoking histories of vulnerability and resistance. The exhibition title, GRAFT, reflects Castellano’s methodology: joining distinct elements to form a whole while preserving their separate origins. For the artist, the seam is always visible, a symbolic site where memory is neither purified nor erased but carried forward in transformed form.
This ethos aligns with concepts of postmemory—the idea that certain histories, though not personally lived, can still be inherited, felt, and reshaped through artistic practice. Castellano’s works are characterized by an understated emotional intensity. His minimal gestures—an embedded cross, a hollowed beam, an oil stain—invite contemplation without imposing interpretation. As he has stated, “Objects exist, and I build a context around them. Nothing more.” Yet in this “nothing more,” there is an ethics of attention: a belief that meaning resides in the overlooked, in what remains when everything else has fallen away. Playfulness, too, has a role in his practice—not in the light-hearted sense, but in the deeper, more existential forms defined by theorist Roger Caillois. His studio process moves between chance, mimicry, and disorientation, often culminating in works that evoke lost worlds or speculative memories. A fragment of wood becomes a reliquary; a relic becomes a stage for the imagination.
Castellano lives and works in Madrid and studied at the University of Granada, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and the ISCP in New York. His work has been exhibited widely at institutions including Sala Alcalá 31 (Madrid), Centro José Guerrero (Granada), CAAC (Seville), Bozar (Brussels), and Kunsthalle São Paulo. His sculptures are held in major public and private collections such as Fundación Botín, CA2M, ARTIUM, MUSAC, and TBA21.
For more information, please consult Mai 36 Galerie’s website here.
Last Updated on September 29, 2025
- Published on
About the author:
Julien Delagrange (b. 1994, BE) is an art historian, contemporary artist, and the director of CAI and CAI Gallery. Previously, Delagrange has worked for the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels, the Jan Vercruysse Foundation, and the Ghent University Library. His artistic practice and written art criticism are strongly intertwined, examining contemporary art in search of new perspectives in the art world.
