The Barcelona gallery Chiquita Room (Carrer de Villarroel, 25, Eixample) hosts from June 25 to September 3 Celestino Boutique, the first exhibition in the city by the Argentine artist based in Barcelona Hernán Aguirre, which is included in the Art Nou festival. The exhibition proposes a reflection on memory, the construction of identity, and the limits of sculpture based on a large piece of furniture that acts as a container for the artist's personal archive.
This central piece articulates a journey in which everyday objects, paintings, and invented elements dialogue with each other to construct a narrative that oscillates between reality, lies, and surrealism. Far from presenting a conventional autobiography, Celestino Boutique transforms life itself into a fiction, where each object and each image function as fragments of stories that perhaps never happened, but that reveal the artist's personal universe.
The exhibition features a curatorial text by Leto Ybarra and also proposes an investigation into the notion of sculpture and ways to avoid it, blurring the boundaries between object, installation, and construction. The proposal puts traditional categories of sculptural work in tension and invites the public to rethink what it means to construct an artistic piece.
Celestino Boutique can be visited at Chiquita Room until September 3, from Tuesday to Friday from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
About the artist
Born in San Miguel de Tucumán in 1993, Hernán Aguirre develops a practice based on the assemblage of discarded materials, personal archives, and objects marked by use and affection. His works explore public identities, the emotional relationship with objects, and the figure of the artist as a social construct. His work combines precarious and residual elements with an aesthetic of fragile luxury that generates tensions between dignity, loss, and desire.
Trained at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán with a specialization in ceramics, Aguirre was part of the Artists Program at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Throughout his career, he has received, among others, the arteBA Award (2018), the Young Art Biennial Award from the Centro Cultural Recoleta (2017), and the Creation Grant from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2019). His work has been shown at events such as arteBA, Bienal Sur, SWAB Art Fair, Feria Ch.ACO, and Salón Acme, in Mexico.
He currently lives and works in Barcelona, where he also co-directs EX’ sielo, a curatorial project based in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat that promotes artistic exchange between Argentina and Catalonia.
