The Can Framis Museum of the Vila Foundation Casas presents 'Carles Gabarró - The fragility of painting in the era of 'fast food'', an exhibition curated by Francesc Puntí that proposes a journey through Gabarró's pictorial career, articulated through four major series: Magma, Libraries, Factories and Beds, with works that span from the eighties to his most recent production.
Carles Gabarró (Barcelona, 1956) constructs suggestive and symbolic material painting. His work moves between figuration and abstraction, in a process of repetition that is not static, but generates constant transformation. Despite sharing some elements with other artists of his generation, he has traced his own and singular path, with a personal iconography that deliberately distances itself from the predominant currents. His painting inhabits an intermediate space, difficult to categorize, where he constructs an absolutely personal look. His production is a continuous dialogue with the material, turning painting into an investigation into the limits of visual language.
'Magma', Carles Gabarró (1996)
In Magma (1995-1996), the painting expands across the canvas like an organic mass in motion. The opaque and dense brushstrokes create an accumulated tension that seems to want to escape and that the frame cannot contain. In Biblioteques (2006-2024), on the other hand, the vision is hermetic: compact and oppressive structures suggest impassable and solid walls, where the presence of the elements refers to the Baroque tradition of vanitas. The landscapes of Fàbriques (2009-2015) oscillate between reality and imagination, evoking desolate scenarios that suggest both concrete geographies and mental spaces. In contrast, in Llits (2013-2024), the domestic object, loaded with symbolism, becomes a territory of contradictions: a place of rest and passion, of dreams and death. Finally, Analogies (2023-2024) marks a new approach to his production, opting for smaller formats and a pictorial exploration that combines immediacy and intensity. This set of works is a reconfiguration of his practice, but without abandoning its essence, maintaining painting as a space for constant reflection and experimentation.
'Biblioteca', Carles Gabarró (2021)
Carles Gabarró began his artistic career after studying Physics and Chemistry at the University of Barcelona. Upon graduation, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the city's artistic environment and began his training in painting. In 1980, he returned to Barcelona and set up his first studio in El Raval, where he opted for independent and self-taught pictorial research.
Since its inception, his work has been present in galleries in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. His first solo exhibition was held in 1985 at the Galeria Ángel Romero in Madrid and, since 1991, he has exhibited regularly at the Galeria Maeght in Barcelona. Now, the exhibition at Can Framis, open to the public until June, offers a look at his unique trajectory, an intense and persistent body of work, where painting unfolds in a territory full of relationships, analogies and metaphors.
'Llit', Carles Gabarró (2019)