Individual exhibition by Girbent at Pelaires Cabinet. 

Excerpt from the conversation between art critic Arturo Castro and Girbent (about Manifiesto) that closes the book "Girbent: 21st Century Paintings":

«Arturo Castro: Manifiesto for a Painting of the 21st Century… A crystalline synthesis of your entire aesthetic discourse, or a typical Girbent-style joke?

Girbent: Well, you've gone straight to the point (laughs). The truth is that in Manifiesto I've thought everything through carefully so that the public can interpret it both ways. It seems obvious that there's a direct allusion to the manifestos that marked the 20th century.

Manifestos defined the modern narrative. Not for nothing is Modernity called both "the age of the avant-garde" and "the age of manifestos".

Fauvism, Suprematism, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism, Neoplasticism, Abstract Expressionism… Is Manifiesto an homage or a parody of the manifestos of the modern era?

It could be, you know, perhaps even a parody of a parody…

You've lost me.

You know Lars von Trier is one of my favorite filmmakers.

I know… an enthusiasm I don't share.

Well, let's leave that debate for another time (smiles). What I was saying is that Lars von Trier, together with fellow Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, presented in 1995 the DOGMA manifesto, a decalogue of precepts according to which cinema was to recover the lost purity of its origins. Although the Dogma 95 manifesto remains a landmark in recent film history, to me it's quite obvious that it was a gigantic joke by a (brilliant) artist-trickster.

Dogma 95 was already a wink, or a parody, of the exclusionary manifestos of Modernity.

I assume that was my reference when proposing Manifiesto. That's why I mentioned the possibility of it being a wink to a wink, or a parody of a parody.

There's an interesting film with the same title as your proposal: Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt, 2015)—in which everything that's said in the film consists of literal fragments from various 20th-century manifestos… including, at the end, the one by Lars von Trier.

I've seen it, a beautiful film halfway between video art and cinema. The whole subject interests me greatly because, as you know, I argue that this dogmatic landscape governed by continuous manifestos dissolved some time ago, even though its ghost still imposes, in certain circles, its spectral tutelage over today's art. But the reality is that this paradigm has expired, and today we artists move –speaking strictly in this sense of freedom—within a clearer landscape, where all options are considered a priori, without dogmatic exclusions telling us what the artist must do, what is art, and what is not.

So, your Manifiesto…

I conceived it as a proposal in which some of the fundamental guidelines of my aesthetic discourse of recent years would be clearly stated, yes—but making sure that everything was governed by a distinctly playful spirit.

Playful and provocative.

Well, yes… and slightly provocative (smiles).

I suppose you're aware of how controversial some of the precepts in your decalogue are.

I am. But the idea is precisely to provoke controversy—albeit exclusively artistic controversy—and to bring the public into a critical conversation. With Manifiesto I wanted to set in motion a small "war machine" for aesthetic skirmish. To shine a light on certain subtleties, to invite a rethinking of certain questions.

I gather that the painting illustrating your decalogue—a replica of Velázquez's Rokeby Venus—is meant to be, in its own way and under its gentle appearance, another modest "war machine", to use your own jargon.

Yes, in the sense that the arguments of my artistic credo are somehow embodied in it.

An undeniable technical excellence in the service of a demanding exercise in mimesis. A repetition that directly challenges the core of Modernity: originality, novelty, the break with tradition…

It's a painting that presents itself as a painted paradox, and one that aptly represents my wager: the pursuit of radical contemporaneity while avoiding any excursion to the margins of the medium or the forcing of its limits. My bet is the opposite: to produce—paradoxically—an absolutely contemporary work without moving an inch from the very center of the medium through which I express myself, using the same technique, the same subject, the same manner as (possibly) the greatest of the old masters.

Even the title of the work strikes me as very telling in that sense: Contemporary Painting (No-Velázquez No. 2). I sense the Borgesian spirit of Girbent peeking through.

My fascination with Borges is no secret.

You repeat a Baroque masterpiece and present it as the spearhead—despite appearances—of the most current art.

That is precisely my wager. But regardless of its function within the framework of the proposal, I stand by this painting as the best of my production.

An assertion in which I sense a certain provocative intent…

A statement of the same kind as the one made by novelist Javier Marías when he claimed that his translation of Sterne's Tristram Shandy was the best of his own texts.

Whether Manifiesto is a modest parlor game, a joke, or a full-fledged declaration of artistic intent, I'm not sure you realize that we may be looking at the first artistic manifesto of the 21st century.

I doubt it… but I wouldn't rule it out (smiles).

____

MANIFIESTO

DECALOGUE FOR A 21ST-CENTURY PAINTING

1.-Painting is an artistic medium as contemporary –and potentially as radical – as any other.

2.- Technical excellence is no guarantee of value, but neither should it be a handicap: it is a sharpened tool at the artist's service, enabling the creation of a certain kind of work.

3.- We are in the 21st century, the age of the internet and AI. The context has changed since the 20th century, and so have the rules of the game. Consequently, the constant demands for originality and novelty –inherent to the modern paradigm– may be rejected

4.- Not only all images (filmic, photographic, or painted) but also all styles –all "manners"– are available to the contemporary artist when developing their proposals.

5.- In painting, copies do not exist: everything is an original. A painting that repeats another painting is a unique and unrepeatable singularity. Anyone who claims otherwise has not gone very far in their analysis.

6.- A work by a (serious) contemporary artist that repeats a work from the past, painted in the manner of that past artist, is a contemporary artwork in every sense.

7.- A 21st-century painting need not express anything about the artist's life. The aim should be the creation of a pictorial event. The expression will come in addition, in the background, as an unavoidable side effect: a subtle residue clinging to the work like a scent.

8.- A 21st-century painting need not contain any explicit message, nor illustrate any doctrine or ideology.

9.- As the work of an artist, and not an activist, the element a good 21st-century painting must take into account is the paradox.

10.- The modern paradigm has expired: to correctly read a 21st-century painting, one must wear the right glasses.

____

Girbent (Sóller, 1969) lives and works in Sóller. In 1986, he enrolled in the Fine Arts Faculty in Barcelona. He soon left the university and spent some time moving through the city's bohemian circles. During this period, he devoted himself to watching films (almost exclusively auteur and experimental cinema) and to reading, mainly essays and philosophy.

In 1989, he travelled to the former GDR and enrolled at the renowned Academy of Art in Leipzig, where he experienced firsthand the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, he exhibited his first paintings in the group show The Wall, held in an alternative, countercultural space in the German capital.

A year later, he left Germany and travelled to Mexico City, where he explored the possibilities of video, filming in locations frequented by the Infrarealists, such as the "Quito" café on Bucarelli Street. In Mexico, he continued reading compulsively, though his interest had shifted from essays to literature: Borges, Gadda, Pessoa, Faulkner, Joyce...

He spent 1992 and 1993 in Mérida, on the Yucatán peninsula.

After what he considers his Mexican period of reflection, he returned to his native Mallorca and began working with Galería Horrach Moyá. There he met Juan Antonio Horrach, who would become his gallerist and representative for the following 25 years. Their collaboration proved notably fruitful; one example was the exhibition cycle PICTURES, five consecutive solo shows that occupied the entire Horrach Moyá gallery over two years — an unprecedented milestone in the artistic landscape of the Balearic Islands. The acclaimed VERMEER/GIRBENT was the fourth exhibition in this series.

In 2020, OPUS NIGRUM, his solo exhibition at CAC Málaga, marked the reopening of artistic activity in Spain following its suspension due to the COVID pandemic.

In 2024, he began collaborating with Galería Pelaires through his solo exhibition RECENT PAINTINGS and a small presentation in the Pelaires Cabinet, LANDSCAPES (AFTER TARKOVSKY POLAROIDS). With MANIFIESTO, opening at the end of 2025, he will present his third exhibition with Pelaires.