Rafel G. Bianchi
3/09

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Rafel G. Bianchi, born in 1967 in Olot, a small town in Catalonia, lives and works in Barcelona. He has shown work in one-man shows and group shows throughout Spain, as well as in Berlin and Paris; his latest one-man show, Happy Family, was in Barcelona in 2007. Spain's national museum in Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof?a, as well as Barcelona's contemporary art museum, MACBA, are among the museums that have collected his art.
Bianchi stayed at the JCVA in March of 2009, for a period of two weeks.  He visited many galleries, the Tel Aviv and Petah-Tikva museums, the Bauhaus show in Tel Aviv and the annual Fresh Paint Contemporary Art Fair.  He also made sure to visit the local Natural History Museum in Jerusalem, as he does wherever he stays.  Bianchi met and made connections with several artists and curators over his stay; he found commonality with Israeli artist Boaz Arad, who, like Bianchi, uses humor and irony in his art.
1923/Robinson chair

In this multi-layered work, Bianchi begins with a conference table designed in Bauhaus style by Josef Albers in 1923. He then links this table to Daniel Defoe's famous literary hero, Robinson Crusoe, as well as to the castaway Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Defoe's tale.

In the first stage of the piece, Bianchi ordered a table made in accordance with a photograph of Albers' table, and proceeded to deconstruct the table and its drawings by adding or redrawing table parts, and playing with the functionality and rationality of the original design. He proceeded to detach one of the table's actual legs, and undo its basic symmetry.  When Bianchi discovered that the original table has been lost, he linked this loss to the disappearance of Selkirk, and as he continued transforming the table he eventually turned it into a chair, which he calls a chair for Robinson Crusoe.

The work reveals a fascination with process, rather than product. Along with the reconstruction of Albers' lost table, it offers a thorough examination of that reconstruction, its materials, aesthetics, functionality, purpose and effectiveness.