Rafel G. Bianchi

(Olot, 1967)

Rafel G. Bianchi was born in Olot in 1967 and was awarded a degree in painting in 1992, followed by a postgraduate thesis on ‘Graphic Work Today. From the etched print to the digital print’ at the Universitat de Barcelona and a PhD in ‘Painting in the Digital Age’ (2002). In parallel with an academic career that has culminated in teaching, Bianchi (or Rafel Griera Pedrosa) has produced a body of artistic work that evades any kind of automatically detectable formal continuum, and exercises absolute freedom in the use of displays and strategies to achieve the particular objective on each occasion. His work often revolves around questions, and these are often addressed sarcastically at art and the artist, at the figure and the system, possibly influenced from his first beginnings by the notorious career of his painter father. Profoundly aware of the world of art and painting from an early age, he did not take long to make a name for himself on the contemporary scene with work that frequently exposes tensions with a fine critical intelligence and irony. Rafel G. Bianchi makes good use of the absurd, and of the freedom this affords, irony and subtlety or a sarcastic take on the superficial enabling him to reach places it would be difficult to access by means of rectitude alone.

Marina Vives Cabré