Galería Tomás March is pleased to present the latest work by the artist Antonio Girbés (Tabernes de la Valldigna, Valencia, 1952).

Girbés studied at the American School of Photography in Paris where he met Helmut Newton and Guy Burdin. In 1980 he worked with Horst P. Horst, from whom he learned his dramatic use of light. His works are included in major international collections like Estée Lauder NY, Illy Collection, Deustche Bank, Gianni Agnelli, and Fundació la Caixa among others. He was chosen by C-Photo magazine to undertake this work Forbidden City, commissioned by Elena Ochoa Foster, director of the Ivory Press in London for issue 3, a monographic on cities. He possesses an extensive and well-recognised body of work and his latest creations have been seen in Moscow and New York, as well as at the last Venice Biennale of Architecture.

This is the first time that FORBIDDEN CITY has being shown in its entirety. The collection explores the architecture of the forbidden city of Beijing in a painstaking photographic task where Antonio reveals to us the visual impact these elements of oriental architecture have had on him. With a sleek photographic technique and ingenuity he narrates the aesthetic romance between this forbidden city and the photographer, behind its unbreachable walls.

Many peoples fear photography, believing that it can capture and steal their soul, and this is precisely what Girbés wanted to do with this work.

His photos, erstwhile western “mandalas”, are the result of this aesthetic capturing that couples the creation of a new reality based on classic and millenary Chinese architecture with the very concept of the mandala or representation of the world that it invites us to meditate.