To curate the exposition of Antonio Barroso (Xirivella 1963) is not work, nor is it an exercise of particular use; it is an aesthetic pleasure without equal that emanates from the ecstatic contemplation of his work.
The work of Antonio Barroso is of megalithic consistency and coherence, a combination of recurrent themes and the utilization of photographic and pictorial techniques likewise recurrent that he combines with a firm hand. It is to this line of work that Antonio Barroso has been attached for many years. The vein of inspiration for his work, far from exhaustion, surprises me each time that he shows me a new work.
The exposition “URBAN MIND,” now showing at the gallery Proyecto Arte Galeria in Madrid, is an exposition to contemplate with a gaze both serene and almost as aseptic as the meticulous and formal treatment that Antonio Barroso uses in his work. It is not chance therefore that all of the displayed works share the same techniques and materials: photography, mixed media, and methacrylate over wood. His technique is as compact as the depth of his work.
The exposition, principally formed from works of large size and complemented with others of medium, gathers together recent work of intense and impassioned form, like the individual personalities reflected in each.

-- Luis Mistral, curator and art critic
 

In the work of Antonio Barroso, the shadows fall across the backdrop cutting the images of strange figures into mysterious silhouettes before the perplexed gaze of the observer. Passive portraits invade the space transported through light between the first and middle planes, focusing the eye on the impassioned scarred captives in their poetic entirety. The artist classifies the painting as a medium for giving form to color through geometry, while the photography converts it into an instrument for investigation, discovering the three dimensional effects that are without a doubt the most characteristic and personal stamps of Barroso’s work.
Through a series of emerging portraits between dream and reality, the past and the present melt into poetic and saddened images that invite reflection on the existential within that which disconnects us. Faces flow without superposition, rhythmic within the quietude of a disturbing darkness, alone or accompanied by some foreign element which changes them into ambiguous representations whose abstract and obsessive nature explore the relation of the human being with different personalities.
Constructing and manipulating these unusual scenes, the silhouettes recall each photographic experimentation claimed by constructionists, such as the stills of Man Ray, the experimentation with light of Moholy Nagy at the Design Institute of Chicago, the surrealist photographic collages, the works of Hockney or Jan Hendriks, and include the use of photographic materials for conceptual artists