Beneath the Wheel: death and trial of Hans Giebenrath

Putting my development as an artist into context, I must say that I did not have the best luck once I finished my
studies in the Netherlands. My financial situation has been very uncertain at times. I had to return to Mallorca for
complicated family circumstances and I had to work very hard to be able, from time to time, to continue painting.
do, participate in exhibitions and apply for some residencies and scholarships. The truth is that it has been a hard time
personal level. That's why the idea of finding an external influence on which to build a bridge between my practice
artistic and my current personal relationship with the world has been present in my head for a long time.
I have found in Herman Hesse's novel “Under the Wheels” certain reminiscences of generational tension.
nal and the superimposition of the archive on real experiences as elements linked to my work. This is a very
special book for me since it appeared in my life just before this whole last period. It has a cover
wonderful from Daniel Gil that reminds me of certain uses of black in my work and that attracted me immediately. The book
tells the story of Hans Giebenrath, a child prodigy who is admitted to a high-level seminar where
The pressure of the older ones leads him to a bucolic and self-destructive inertia that serves as the common thread of a criticism to education that gradually impoverishes the experience of the world, leaving personal development
as something residual in the child's life. In some way the text appeals to a universal feeling of discomfort that
anyone may have felt through the formative years of it.Beyond an exercise in self-lament, what interests me in the novel is the conflict between the characters that arises from their inability to see the other, from their way of projecting their fears and fantasies onto the protagonist, to the point of turning him into an empty container. The way it is described turns this projection onto “others” into an experience parallel to the play of art, to the understanding of why we project the images created by others onto the surface of the painting in the way we do. I thought that choosing such a rabid narrative motif was something that would bring me some benefit in contrast to my artistic practice. I believe that painting provides a more open working methodology that allows you to focus on a single design that
illustrate the story (with its process and its sketches), either through a mantra that is repeated serially, or through a succession of complete pieces that never close the story, but are constantly portraying different angles and impressions of what is narrated. In this sense, the project can be as long as one wants,
surviving or not the exhibition project.