Rafel Bestard
b. 1967
Palma de Mallorca
“My creative process begins with personal encounters, in my studio, with close friends and acquaintances. I document these meetings by means of photographs. I use these pictures as references to my paintings, that therefore are the final form of a process based on a photo document based on a performance.
With my subjects I try to display a broad range of evocative powers with the simplest things or gestures. On each one of my paintings something is trying to break through. Embracing communication problems with my beloved ones, references to the world: complex, distorted, with autobiographical interpretations, between feelings of safety and uncertainty, melancholy and hope, resignation and defiance. Emotional tension between affection and detachment is present.”
Bestard was born in Palma de Mallorca, 1967. He received his degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona in 1990, with his first solo exhibition taking place in 1996 in Galeria Mediterrania in Palma. Bestard’s work can be found in galleries, art fairs, museums and art fairs internationally.
The artist has lived and worked in Sa Casa Blanca, Mallorca since 2004.
Hic et nunc
Victor Castañeda
Curator
“Hic et nunc is a Latin phrase that could be understood as "The present", it talks about what happens here and now. In the ancient Latin world it referred to the power of myths, understanding that their importance did not lie in the origin, nor in how they had arisen, it did not even matter why. What did matter was the presence of its vital teaching, which, in present, showed and explained the world. It mattered what the myth reflected in each of the people and how it determined their behaviour and their relationship with current life, Hic et nunc.
When looking at the work of Rafel Bestard one discovers the simplicity of his compositions, poses reduced to short instants, sober and elegant, of concise colours, where characters are represented in strange hieratic poses. It is in that image where something happens, where our senses are put on alert, and there appear meanings that unsettle us, the beginning of a mystery that we would like to apprehend, that we would like to decipher and contain. However, the motive seems to elude us, slippery disturbs us.
We take a step back. We continue contemplating. We reconfigure the most basic signs, we find for example a ballerina position, a wings spread, a blow to a wall, a face covered by a piece of cloth, a foot climbing a chair and many more; it happens then - we reconfigure - those meanings begin to speak to us not only in evidence but also in potential, they ask us to see what they can become. We understand: Flying is the bird's competence but the act lies in the very idea of flying, in that possibility of emulating the bird, there in Bestard's work we see arms deployed ready to take off. Will he make it? Or even more, if I imitate that position myself, will I make it?
We discover reduced technical elements in limited oil tones and just a few brushstrokes, the artist in his path has discovered that simplicity in resources turns out to be more expressive to create his personal poetic. Few oil colours and precise strokes, is essential to avoid the unnecessary baroque style that distorts the message. Rafel Bestard has been able to create a personal pictorial metalanguage, which alphabet is deciphered through each of his works.
As it is said of the great masters of Spanish painting (Velázquez, Murillo, Goya, etc.) Bestard, like the others, is disturbed by the nature of the human being, in all forms and manifestations, the mission is to discover and translate in each scene the object and situation to be portrayed, interpretation in the search for context, so that the spectator allows himself to be confronted, the human being appears to be looking deep, looking at oneself. Interior scenes, of measured light, there is no heaven because there is no longer the gaze of God, only the withdrawal of the artist within his inner self, immersed in his way of seeing the world to interpret each one of us within it. Hic et nunc.”