Antonio Girbés
Né à Tabernes de Valldigna en 1952, Valencia. España.
Vit et travaille à Valencia.

Born in Tabernes de Valldigna in 1952, Valencia, Spain.
He lives and works in Valencia.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2008
Forbidden City, Galería Tomás March, Valencia (España)
Gotham City, Aidan Gallery, Moscú (Rusia)
Forbidden City, Galleria LipanjePuntin, Roma (Italia)
2002
Cabezas cortadas, Galleria LipanjePuntin, Trieste (Italia)
2001
El cuerpo del Arte, 1ª Bienal de Valencia, Valencia (España)
2000
Rosen in der Kunst, Gallerie Walker, Rosental (Austria)
1999
Galería Canem, Castellón (España)
1998
The untitleds, Galleria LipanjePuntin, Trieste (Italia)
1996
Pre Primavera, Galería Berini, Barcelona (España)
1995
Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York (EEUU)
Gallerie Espace Swisse, Estrasburgo (Francia)
1994
Galeria Lluc Fluxà, Palma de Mallorca (España)
Mestna Galerja, Ljubjana (Eslovenia)
Galerie Würthle, Viena (Austria)
Galeria Sen, Madrid (España)
1993
FNAC. Exposición Itinerante. Francia
1992
Passport Gallery, Barcelona (España)
Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (España)
Nord Pinus, Arles (Francia),
Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie
Galería Charpa, Valencia (España)
1991
Galerie Michel Guindle, Lyon (Francia)
1982
Galería Charpa, Valencia (España)
1981
Galería Veles e Vents, Denia (España)
1980
Casa de la Cultura Valdepeñas, Ciudad Real (España)

COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS:

2008
ART DUBAI, Aidan Gallery
ARTE FIERA BOLOGNA, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
ARCO, Galería Tomás March
2007
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Tomás March
DFOTO, San Sebastián, Galería Tomás March
FORO SUR 2007 Cáceres, Galería Tomás March
FNAC, C PHOTO MAGAZINE, Exposición itinerante
FACCIA LEI. Portraits in transition in between medias
and cultural areas. Spazio Thetis, Venecia
SIN CUERPO, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea Roma
NY C PHOTO EXHIBITION, Phillips de Pury & Company New York
2006
C ON CITIES, Bienal de Venecia
VIENNAFAIR, Viena, Aidan Gallery
ART MOSCOW, Moscú, Aidan Gallery
2004
ARCO, Madrid, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
Essènsies 8, Colección Olor Visual, Ernesto Ventós, Universidad de Valencia
2003
Arte y Moda, Museo de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
ARCO, Madrid, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
Galerie Judith Walker, Viena
2002
ARTE FIERA BOLOGNA, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
ARCO, Madrid, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
2000
Les 100 Sourires de Monna Lisa, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo
Les 100 Souries de Monna Lisa, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka
Les 100 Souries de Monna Lisa, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Hiroshima
Still –in- Motion, Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo
ART COLOGNE, Colonia, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
LISTE, Basel, Aidan Gallery
Supermodel: Identity and Transformation, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea,
Trieste
Transfhorma, Casa de la Cultura Carmen Mantilla, La Habana
Transfhorma, Uruñeco de Pamplona, Pamplona
Transfhorma, Pabellón de Mixtos, Ciudadela, Menorca
ARCO, Madrid, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
1999
ART COLOGNE, Colonia, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
Flora, Musée des Beaux Arts, Mons
ART BRUSSELS, Bruselas, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
1998
PARÍS PHOTO, París, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
ART COLOGNE, Colonia, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
Se son rose fioritanno, Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto
Nothing but... Flowers, Galleria LipanjePuntin, Trieste
ART FRANKFURT, Frankfurt, Galeria LipanjePuntin
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Lluc Fluxá
Tranfhorma, Galería Lluc Fluxá, Palma de Mallorca
1997
PARÍS PHOTO, París, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
ARTÍSSIMA, Torino, LipanjePuntin Artecontemporanea
MIAMI ART FAIR, Miami, Monique Knowlton Gallery
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Sen
Kunstsalon, Oskar Shmidt, Viena
Summer Show, Galeria Anonimus, Ljubljana
Out of Eden, The Kemper Museum of Contemporany Art, Kansas City
1996
Splash, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York
In Bloom, New Jersey Center of Visual Arts, New Jersey
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Lluc Fluxá
Horror Vacui, Galería Lluc Fluxá, Palma de Mallorca
Kunstsalon, Oskar Schmidt, Viena
1995
Inaugural Group Show, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York
Col·lecciò Testimoni, Adquisiciones 95. La Caixa, Palma de Mallorca
Cap-ses Instal-lació, Galería Lluc Fluxá, Palma de Mallorca
IV Mostra Unión Fenosa, La Coruña
Still Lives in Photography 1920-1995, Galerie Hünerman, Düsseldorf
Slovenia open to Art. Exposición Itinerante
ART BASEL, Galerie Würthle
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Lluc Fluxá
1994
ART BASEL, Galerie Würthle
1993
ARCO, Madrid, Galería Charpa
1992
Festival de l´Image, Le Mans
1990
Galería Charpa, Jávea
1980
Salón de la Jeune Peinture, París
Homenaje a Picasso, Centro Cultural de Vitry, París

"GOTHAM CITY"

Press-release

          The project “Gotham City” is the first solo show in Moscow of the famous Spanish photographer Antonio Girbes (b. 1952). One of the most renowned stars of the world art market, he took part in the 1st Valencia Biennale of Contemporary (2001) in the section “The Body of Art” curated by the legendary Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva. Girbes’s career started in Paris at the beginning of the 1980s working as assistant to worldwide acclaimed American fashion photographer Horst P. Horst. It is only in 1990 that he got interested in making contemporary art. Before that he had travelled all around the world working as a press photographer. This change was decisive and was noticed at once by the art community.
The series of large-scale colour cibachrome prints with aesthetic compositions of bright vivid and dry colours on blurred dark background amazed for its decadent metaphysics, which was far from the momentariness of his previous photo reportages. Girbes started to live his own life according to the rules of art: he kept growing flowers in his garden and, as if this was not enough, he got a fetish for stealing flowers from parks and greenhouses. He became known as a refined maniac-aesthete, making endlessly “flower” series ignoring those who accused him of being boring and monotonous. “I am not after being original. I won’t even pay for it. Moreover, I am not interested at all in giving the public masterpieces” – said once this outsider. However, he perfectly masters new technologies and is not afraid of experimenting with computers.
This first stage in Antonio Girbes’s production ended in the proper way. Once a madman attacked him with an axe. He tried to cut the photographer’s head off just like a flower is cut from the stem. After this incident, he was done with the “vegetable” theme and sold his garden. But the motif of the guillotine stayed. When he was photographing the digs in Efes for the Austrian Archeological Institute he witnessed the discovery of the head of an antique statue. This mystic event spurred him to take a new direction with his art. He made the black and white series of digitally modified enigmatic heads – they could have been real people, marble sculptures, plaster casts, or even Mona Lisa. “I stopped cutting flowers and started chopping heads” – grimly joked Girbes. His misanthropy and his desire to create transcendental beauty were so strong that even the lifeless heads-objects were for him “too human”.
From the beginning of 2000 he makes “architectural” cycles. The link with reality is not completely cut off in the fantastic urban scenes with no people called “Somewhere Nowhere” (it helped his experience as a press photographer!). Unrecognizable fragments of buildings from which the artist “pecks out” squared patterned rugs form “The Forbidden City”. Then, the new project “Gotham City” which is on display at Aidan Gallery.
As everybody knows, Gotham City is where Batman’s cine-adventures take place. However, knowing Girbes’s aesthetics and philosophy one should not look for connections in this direction. Absurd collages of astonishing beauty and technical execution come out of metallic surfaces, beams, castles and mansions, urban nightmare and architectural signs of luxury, all equally indiscernible. It seems that the artist does not react to his surroundings. He selflessly composes one endless jigsaw without beginning or end, although it is divided into specific fragments – the artworks. He is like a child with a kaleidoscope who keeps looking at the endless compositions that are born in the magic space of the tiny tube ignoring his mother’s call to dinner. A long time ago Girbes spread out his herbariums killing animate nature. Now he is preparing the city, covering it with supernatural beauty. It is difficult to say if this virtual “Gotham City” was ever a city.
For those who are familiar with Russian contemporary art, to visually explain what Girbes is doing today it is possible to mention the collages of Ilya Piganov, also a famous aesthete. But the handmade works of the latter were motivated by his passionate character craving for classics. Here, we are instead dealing with futurology, with beauty and the decorative art of an epoch that has not come yet. Maybe, this epoch will never arrive in reality; it will be part only of the imaginary existence of Hollywood science fiction and of the works of Antonio Gerbes, aesthete from virtuality.

Alexander Panov

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"GOTHAM CITY"


"Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes"
The Beatles, Lucy in the sky with diamonds

         Gotham City is fiction, utopia, a place that in reality does not exist. At the same time, it is fiction that implies the presence of an existing place. From comics and Hollywood films we know that Gotham City is where Batman lives – in this megapolis the superhero constantly fights against evil. Already in 1807 Washington Irving popularized the nickname “Gotham” for New York City and Edgar Allan Poe wrote “Doings of Gotham”. But Batman’s Gotham City is the New York of the end of the 20th century, that is, the time when it became the incarnation of a frightening monster, as all expanding megapolis are in real life. However, New York has stopped to look like Gotham City already a while ago. Gotham City is now everywhere. It does not matter if we are talking about New York, Shanghai, Lagos, or Moscow. Gotham City is the city with a global scale. Artist Antonio Girbes’s credo is photography.
His works consist of series. After he completed a set of still lives reproducing flower compositions and historical portraits, not destined to success, he turned to architecture. Gotham City is his third incursion – after “Cuaderno” and “Forbidden City” – in the mystic of the city. Gotham City is a congenial title because the photomontage of this series is fiction, a fiction whose meaning lies in real images, which are analogues of cinematic fiction. We are fascinated by both the appeal and aesthetic charm of these intricate structures and the phantasmagoric architecture devised by script writers for Batman’s abode.
Antonio transforms the architectural motifs which he had captured in his many trips around the world. He structures them in such a new way that at times they are unrecognizable. To achieve this effect he employs techniques taken from cubism, futurism, dadaism, a strategy that El Lissitzky calls “visual engineering“. Today these methods are common. But Antonio Girbes uses them using a computer to perfection, when what is easy appears to be difficult and the other way around. Unexpectedly, we experience those feelings that we had in our childhood when we looked in a kaleidoscope and we were so happy. The patterns resulting from multi-coloured fragments are even more beautiful. When they are transferred as images in series on amazing pictures they become at direct view on a reality which can be interpreted in many different ways. The most impressing aspect of Antonio’s photomontages is that, when we look at them, we forget about everything else and we keep looking with wide open eyes at something still unknown, as it were the first time.
His dazing geometry of lines and breath-taking ornaments make us dive into imaginary depths, soar over unknown altitudes, or get lost in the labyrinths of the ideal city. These singular formats reveal us breath-taking prospects and paths which can even lead to dead ends. We think that all this eccentricity belongs to someone else. We keep our distance, but at the same time we cannot help feeling strong attraction.
We can compare these photographs with carefully encoded messages. We try to decode them and for this reason we do not realise that we have already penetrated into the mystery so deep that we are actually in its power. From the very beginning we want to single out from the rich spectre of architectural fragments the primary image. But when we think that we are very close to the solution new optical fetters imprison us. The desire to keep searching dies out and we gradually turn ourselves into kaleidoscopes. With sympathy and pleasure our glaze plunges and gets lost in the crazy space of these unexplored territory. Antonio Girbes’s architectural images make us guests in this futuristic city of global scale, whose historical referent is Paris the way Walter Benjamin described it once: “To a certain extent, there is not a single face that is more surreal than the true face of the city”.

Heiner Georgsdorf

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PUBLICATIONS:

2008
Forbidden City.
Texto Amador Griñó
2007
"C International Photo Magazine",
number three "CON CITIES".
C Action Editor Ivory Press, London
2004
Essensies 8, colección olor visual.
Ernesto Ventos.
Editor: Universidad de Valencia
2003
"FASHION ART"
Exposición itinerante por Latino América, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Méjico, Costa Rica, Panamá.
Comisario: Manuel Fernández
Editor: Generalitat Valenciana
2001
"Cabezas Cortadas"
Proyecto Realizado para la ocasión de la 1ª Edición de la Bienal de Valencia,
en la sección "El Cuerpo del Arte".
Comisario: Achille Bonito Oliva
Diseño: Peter Greenaway
Textos: Juan Carlos Iglesias, Miguel Pérez Escrivá.
Editor: Giampaolo Prearo, Milán
Productor: Lipanjepuntin, Trieste
"1ª Bienal de Valencia"
Comunicación entre las artes.
Editor: Charta Milano
Productor: Generalitat Valenciana
2000
"Les 100 sourires de Mona Lisa"
Comisario y textos: Jean Michel Ribettes
Comisario para Japón: Atsushi Miura
Editor: Nihon Keizai Shimbun, INC
"Transforma"
Casa de la Cultura Carmen Mantilla, La Habana, Cuba
Comisaria y texto: María de Lluc Fluxà
"Still in Motion"
Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo
Comisario: Marco Puntin
Editor: Pendragon, Bologna
1998
"The Untitleds"
Galleria Lipanjepuntin, Trieste
Texto: Sonia Rosso
Editor: Lipanjepuntin