“Are you free on your free day?” – Casa De Balneario In Barcelona

These wheat pastes have been appearing on the streets of Barcelona after about two years of hiatus. The author (is it a collective or a single individual?) calls themselves Casa De Balneario and they are back with spiced bon mots for the passersby: clever drawings executed in a DIY style that make them approachable, quizzical, and a favorite in the streets of Barcelona.

Casa De Balneario. “The Pleasure of Buying Unperturbed”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)

Dryly hand-written and accompanied by stiffly simple renderings recalling mid century ads or propaganda posters, these are gentle critiques of our self-deceptions, our pop-consumer culture bromides, our willingness to overlook the unpleasant truth of our slowly warming pot of water. They look at assumptions regarding surveillance, work conditions, civil liberty, and our economic shift downward and pose a question indirectly: How did we settle for this?

Casa De Balneario. “Protest!!. Just don’t cross the line”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “It won‘t catch up to you. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “Are you free on your free day?”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “I don’t love him, but I also don’t pay rent” (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “Never stop dreaming about the things you’d like to buy but can’t afford”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “Don’t jump! Rents will come down one day”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)
Casa De Balneario. “Movie idea: She works all day nonstop and her boyfriend leaves her because they never have time to see each other”. (photo © Lluis OIive Bulbena)

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