Barrão

Barrão investigates how familiar objects can acquire new forms and meanings through fragmentation, accumulation, and encounters between materials. His sculptures are constructed from ceramic and porcelain pieces drawn from a collection of decorative and utilitarian objects gathered at secondhand markets, including shells, animals, fruit, utensils, and other elements of domestic kitsch. Organized by color and motif, these objects constitute a repertoire of forms, finishes, and glazes from which the artist develops abstract structures with branching contours and volumes that suggest organic growth. By assembling fragments and exposing their less recognizable sides, Barrão shifts attention toward color, texture, and silhouette, allowing familiar details to emerge intermittently within hybrid bodies. In this process, fragments from the worlds of commodities and decoration exchange visual and social properties, reconfiguring the relationships between the physical qualities of materials and their symbolic allusions. His watercolors and drawings extend this investigation of volume and spatial relationships to paper, where variations in the density of color and texture situate forms at different depths.