Ibie (Barcelona, 1979) uses his art superpower to paint graffiti inside our little heads.
Suddenly, after seeing, digesting and dreaming his illustrations, we feel like imagining what the world would be like if we were allowed to change the color of sad songs, give funny nicknames to nightmares and make chewing gum out of kisses thrown in the air.
Genuine ninja of minimalism, his Lowbrow Art pieces connect with the most feral surrealist humor.
Ibie is able to concentrate all the energy of Street-Art in an action that turns the world upside down.
To jump with laughter and think out loud.
Graffiti artist, painter, illustrator, editor, graphic designer, art director, his work has been admired in Barcelona, Berlin, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Mexico City and Vienna.
His new exhibition is entitled “Heroes and Villains”.
It opens on Thursday, July 6 at PLOM Gallery. 
PLOM: Introduce us to “Heroes and Villains”. IBIE: The collection includes many of my latest paintings, most of them painted in 2017, although some of the paintings I started at the end of 2015.
I have been painting intermittently, without a very clear idea.
Painting, seeing what was happening and where the painting was asking me to go. 
“This set of pieces takes us back to the domestic intimacy, to the everyday familiarity of small moments tinged with life and improvisation. Ibie generously shares the pulse of her home, transfers to the canvas situations lived in first person and universalizes them giving rise to open works to which we quickly feel connected”.Marta Ballesta. From the catalog of the exhibition “Heroes and Villains”.
PLOM: Did you draw as a child?
When did you start drawing and painting? IBIE: I have a lot of memories and anecdotes from when I was drawing as a child.
Frustrations and joys.
I don’t remember when I started drawing.
What I do remember is that one day, on the way back from watching a movie at the cinema, I wanted to make a drawing and, when it didn’t come out the way I had it in my head, I got very angry.
So much so that I stopped drawing on paper for a couple of years. PLOM: Who introduced you to the art world? IBIE: My first contact with painting was thanks to my uncle.
He painted lead dolls and made models.
That’s how I got my first brush and I was painting figurines until I found graffiti. 
PLOM: When did you start doing graffiti? IBIE: I started one summer, in the 90s, with a couple of friends from the suburbs, taking an edding 500 from the workshop of the father of one of them.
And one thing led to another.
When I went back to school in September, I met up with a repeater who was already spray-painting.
He was the one who started passing me photocopies and introducing me to people from outside the school.
From then on, little by little, until today. 
PLOM: Do you believe in the Superpowers of Art?
When did you discover that art transforms the world and people? IBIE: A painting obviously transforms the space.
Then, if you’re the type of person who watches a ninja movie and goes home hiding in the shadows, seeing a painting probably makes you want to start painting.
Or not, it depends on the person. PLOM: When and how do you like to paint or draw or graffiti?
In the morning, in the afternoon, at night?
In your studio, outdoors?
In silence, with music?
Accompanied by friends, surrounded by animals? IBIE: Lately, I paint a lot at home, at night and with a record I like.
Outdoors I don’t paint much anymore, it requires a lot of energy.
Moving around, looking for a place, carrying the paints, etc.
When I do it, I like to do it with friends.
It’s like going for a run: if you meet up with someone, you don’t run away. 
PLOM: Do you think children like your work? What scares you more: the opinion of an influential critic or that of an 8-year-old child? IBIE: When some kid comes home, other than my kids, it’s like, “Look, he’s painting!”
Or when you’re painting in the street, you turn around and you see the kid walking by holding his dad’s hand, walking fast, and he’s turned around looking at your drawing.
I recently painted in a playground and there was a chorus of children behind me telling me what to do: it was great fun.
Afterwards, parents would come and ask me how much it would cost for me to paint their room.
For adults, everything takes on a different dimension.
For children, just painting, especially if they see the process, is good enough. 
Ibie’s new exhibition, “Heroes and Villains,” opens Thursday, July 6, 2017 at PLOM Gallery.
You are invited!
“Fabrics that are born of certainty, instinct or the sharp feeling of an instant but that, as happens in so many areas of life, develop between interruptions until culminating in a result that has nothing of premeditated script. Back and forth that are intuited in multiple layers that camouflage elements finally discarded or that have been disguised during the process of a new personality and that often welcome the spontaneous brushstrokes of the little girl of the house that bursts into the artist’s studio to unexpectedly transform her father’s work”.
“Images with dreamlike dyes that constitute an invitation without age limit to participate in these prints and to have fun playing at being heroes, villains… or any of the characters to which our imagination gives room”.
Marta Ballesta. From Catalog of the exhibition “Heroes and Villains”. Photos of Fer Alcalà.
