riflepistolacañon takes its title from one of the exhibited pieces, an anonymous children's drawing found in the streets (Jaén, 1976) by Jacobo Castellano years ago that shows some sort of inventory of weapons; riflepistolacañon would be the name invented for that childlike mindset, without regard to the question of grammar, for this small catalog. The mementos, images, and childhood objects, and in general the belongings that accompany people's lives, are precisely the origin of an important part of the work of Castellano, who holds, according to curator Javier Hontoria, "one of the most unique bodies of sculptural work in our country." "In times where research is imposed as an essential method in the artistic practice, Jacobo Castellano emphasizes the perpetuation of experience and the memory of the self as iconography."

The exhibit brings together more than fifty works, amongst which are sculptures, photographs, paintings and installations, made from 2004 up to the present, so it has a certain retrospective nature. Though the works are not presented chronologically and instead are presented by conceptual, narrative, and formal associations, the exhibit allows the evolution of his work to be seen from the initial processes of retrieval and assemblage of scraps and waste to the recontextualization of found objects with a history of their own.

This journey and the importance of his work of childhood memory can be seen in two works that articulate much of the exhibition: Casa I (House I), dated 2006, and Sin título (Proyector con olivo) (Untitled [Projector with Olive Tree]), of 2018. The first is a precarious and lightweight structure composed of fragments of the house where his family spent the summers in Vallargordo: doors, windows, photographs, and other domestic objects. As indicated by Hontoria, "the piece is linked to a moment in the artist's career in which memory was perceived as a fragile accumulation of images and forms."

In turn, Sin título (Proyector con olivo) addresses the issue of memory in a very different way: the old projector that belonged to his grandmother, who ran the cinema of Villargordo, is joined to the large trunk of an olive tree that was found in the same place and gives rise to other narrative possibilities. Ideas of lighting, evocation, imagination, and narration converge in this piece that "is something like a lighthouse, like a guide that accompanies the visitor, from the start of the exhibit, through the memory of that which was experienced."

The central space of riflepistolacañon is occupied by the Torno de clausura (2019), integrated into one of the walls of the gallery. The torno, a rotating drum that allows a certain communication within cloistered convents while still separating contemplative life from daily life, symbolizes here the coexistence of the spiritual and the earthly, of the ritual and the playful, elements present in the work of Castellano.  Other significant works in the exhibit are Peleles, pieces of wood inspired by the well-known Goya painting; Personajes (2018), large installations that evoke human figures; Piñatas (2018), created from the artist's interest in daily rituals and, specifically, in the legacy of the Jesuit colonists in Latin America; and Paso de Semana Santa (2018), that condenses what is popular and what is sacred, the devotion and superstition that comes together during certain religious celebrations.

Jacobo Castellano emerged on the scene of young Spanish sculpture of the new century after finishing his studies at the University of Granada.  Since those beginnings, which could be seen in his first exhibition at the Fúcares gallery in Madrid in 2005, his work demonstrated an interest in childhood memory and family, which materialized in forms linked to the vernacular imagery of his native Andalusia. The entire career of the artist could be summarized in the evaluation of memory of belongings that accompany the vital development of the people, objects, and images that are more or less fragmented, oneiric, and real in equal measure, tangible or ethereal, of pleasant or abject nature and are prone to produce different--and often contradictory-- levels of emotion. Castellano developed in 2010 in Artium the project El mantel y el telón, within the program Praxis. The Artium Collection will integrate into its collection an untitled sculpture from the artist, dated 2005.