Barceló's art links material and form in direct connection to each other. The process-oriented moment of forming and kneading the material - whether loam, clay, soil or pastose oil paint - is always palpable in the end product. Archaic qualities dominate. The main thing here is recollection, the collective memory of the elemental and archetypal. His works are like a chatoyant fabric shot through with becoming and
decaying: sensuous fruits in overripe opulence but which rot in the next instant, mutating into death's heads. Barceló also integrates "extra-art" processes into his work when he has termites make holes in his works on paper, or blackens the canvas with fireplace ash from his studio. Nature is inscribed as permanently changing constant. This also gives rise to classical sea pieces, like weather forecast images or massive waves formed of dynamic masses of paint. Barceló's conception of his painting and sculpture is thus manifest as a constantly changing system, as an open cosmos between life and death.