Benveniste Contemporary is pleased to present a new project by Jacobo Castellano (Jaén, Spain, 1976) titled Retablos (Altarpieces), a series of original graphic work printed and published by Benveniste Contemporary and co-produced with the artist.

Since their first collaboration in 2005, both artist and publisher have collaborated frequently on numerous projects and editions, creating pieces always closely connected and thoroughly adapted to the artists’ practice as a sculptor. The work presented on this occasion emphasises even stronger on this adaptation by employing Castellano’s material of preference, namely wood (varieties such as Hickory, Wenge, Sapele and Oak, amongst others) into the printed work. These new methods, tailored to the artists needs has resulted in these impressive large format works on paper; a collection which is also scheduled to be presented when the artist inaugurates his exhibition in January 2022 in the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.

One of the most important works of the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid is undoubtedly the Main Altarpiece of San Benito El Real. In it we can see the extraordinary display of carvings, polychromies and carnations developed by Alonso Berruguete, one of the most important Spanish sculptors of all time. With an iconography based on the childhood of Christ and the life of Saint Benedict, this altarpiece is presented to us unmounted throughout three rooms of the museum, without losing any of its monumentality and interest. The excellent current layout allows us to observe the rear of this great work, which is where Castellano focus his attention. In that area there are no polychromes and the stewing technique is very far away, or rather, literally on the other side. The placement of the work allows us to analyse the austere work, although no less interesting and necessary, of the artisans that have remained in the dark until now; a work hidden between the majesty of the Berruguete carvings and the lime on the wall of the San Benito monastery.

This new perspective allows an interesting reading of the so called streets and bodies of this construction, stripped, of course, of any iconographic hint. The sobriety of the artisan work shows us in a blatant way the contact of the hatches, chisels and saws with the wood, tools that are far from the rasps or fine gouges that the great masters wielded. In the retina of Jacobo Castellano the backsides of the niches and friezes, rivets, wedges and various accidents where he sees a sort of “face B of everything seen before” are recorded. Castellano emulates and claims in these works the solid work and the essentials of the artisan, indispensable and silent, but not suppressed, thanks to the excellent current installation of the altarpiece and, of course, to these works that we are very pleased to now present.