Interview
GP Magazine - Italy - June 2025
An interview by Marisa Iacopino for an Italian cultural magazine.
Translation:
Soft colours for a world populated by stylised figures that seem to get lost in the evanescence of barely hinted lines but that capture their essence.
This is the mastery with ink and watercolours on Japanese paper of Marcel Garbi, an artist born in Buenos Aires who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom for a few decades. With his multidisciplinary creativity, he currently experiments with the universe of drawing and painting in a personal style of fading reality, almost as if the essence of life itself were revealed through art.
He gave us a powerful, enlightening interview.
“I consider myself a multidisciplinary artist with a wide range of creative interests. My main professional focus has been in illustration, music composition, digital audiovisual media and drawing/painting. I have also explored various other artistic fields, including film production, animation, graphics, photography and sound design”.
Your autobiographical summary is quite intriguing: “My name is Marcel Garbi. And I am not what I do”. So, who are you?
“I am a spiritual being on a temporary 3D journey, during which I have explored a different artistic discipline every decade.”
If painting doesn’t fully represent you, where can we find you at your best?
“I wouldn’t call the colorful gestural drawings that I am actually exploring ‘painting’.
There was a time when music was my main passion, but its survival has become increasingly difficult. It has lost its audience and is now entangled in a web of intellectual justifications, taboos and bureaucracy. I fear that my best is not on this side of the veil, but on the other side, where there is a reality that cannot be seen except through art.”
What is art for you?
“When the artist becomes an ‘instrument,’ art becomes a peephole. As Thomas Bernhard said: ‘Art is a place for another art.’”
In your biographical notes the word “magic” often appears. Do you feel more like a magician?
“Artistic creativity seems a bit like magic, so in part yes, although in a humble way of course.”
The word “play” also often appears in your statements. You say: “I came here to play and blossom. I work to give my contribution, to help bring Heaven to Earth.” Do you mean that, in such dark times, when it seems that everything is being done to bring hell to Earth, art can help change the course of this drift?
“I don’t believe it’s ‘us’ trying to bring hell to Earth, but rather the psychopaths and their bribed/blackmailed army of dumb puppets. WE want a very different way of life on Earth (and WE will get it). Art reminds us of who we are.”
Is the kind of ink and watercolor painting on Japanese paper that you are currently experimenting with one of the many parentheses of your artistic vein?
“Actually, it is my playground, where I look for a poetic experience. I always move towards a poetic realm, whether through current artistic tools or any other medium.”
You have dealt with different artistic disciplines, in addition to painting, music, cinematography. Which of these have allowed you to express yourself best?
“I feel comfortable in what I do in every period of my life. But I am still learning…”
If I am not mistaken, you say that painting is “a minor art. With capital letters”. Is this an oxymoron or an example of English humor?
“I never said that painting is a minor art. What I said that what I am doing now is a minor art. No more Grand Arts, that chapter is closed.
But this little ‘Minor Art’ is written with capital letters because I am utterly serious about it”.
What has been your world of artistic inspiration?
“If we talk about the themes in my artwork, I would say that they revolve around the human experience. However, let me clarify that I do not draw ‘subjects’; they are simply an excuse for a more abstract type of experience. Everything around me becomes a mirror, from which intuition selects reflections based on resonance”.
Projects in progress?
“I have had some ambitious projects in the past, but not anymore. All I want is to be able to continue playing and enjoying life.
It is welcomed any other topic you want to talk about.
The topic that comes to mind is the urgent need for a profound awakening to deal with the difficult times we are living in. We are at a unique historical crossroads, facing a war on multiple fronts: economic, cultural, spiritual, biological, informational, chemical and climate. People must free themselves from the harmful hypnosis created by the media, the lies of corrupt governments and their manipulations”.
And what can ordinary people do to achieve self-awareness that frees them from such a subtle yoke of lies and carried out on a planetary level?
“It is precisely their torpor, their submission, apathy, comfort and ignorance that allow the forces of evil to carry out this massive global coup at every level. For this, there is a need for a collective awakening, a call for people to rise up and help others to awaken as well”.