Rafel Bestard (Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 1967) talks about his work: 'Well, there's no doubt that there is some kind of real world outside our minds, but we know about it only through our experience - an experience that includes not only the direct information we receive through our senses, but also knowledge, memory, fantasy, imagination, dreams…. Conformism limits the experience of the world in everyday life, but we can feel that there is something else, and that is just there, in the joints of the armored commonplace that imprisons us.
From my early days I wanted the painting to reveal something: A special world in which the appearance of absurdity gives way in which things are rebelling against the narrow range of meanings which have been embedded in a world that is becoming increasingly complex.
My work explores the relationship between fusion and fundamental opposites: Light and Shadow, Love and Death. Through a painting technique in which the tradition of the old masters, through influences as diverse as Bachelard philosophy and Kobayashi films, brings forth new representations of eternal concerns'.
The beauty that emerges from Bestard's paintings is always disturbing. The radical eroticism goes side by side with humoristic winks and, in the everyday sight, we see, simultaneously, the strength of desire and the frustrations of a fragile beast, sensitive and isolated. A dead bird closes our mouth. Silence. We are alone in front of the painting. (Albert Lladó, art critic, Barcelona)