LAB 36 presents Gino Rubert’s latest and most ambitious work “Open House”, a site specific piece commissioned by a good friend and art collector.

The complicity and confidence between artist and patron – “you have complete freedom”  Vicenç told him – and the large format of the commissioned work – two meters wide by almost nine meters long – has hinted at Rubert’s work process, reformulating and making his language more sophisticated in order to display a gallery of people and situations that do not have former precedents.

Open House is a family portrait in which references, allusions, quotes, and winks to the patron are conjoined with the characters and distinguished environments that the artist portrays. The personal emblem of the commissioner – a V resting over the valley of an M – designed by Gino for the occasion, is carved in iron on the door and etched into the wood of a chair. Some of their family members appear with a sweetly perverse irony: the mother-in-law, converted into a little girl/old woman who drags her daughter-doll; the father, transformed in a little boy/old man with three eyes; or the wife and son, reincarnated into Andalusian puppets. And, of course, Vicens is portrayed as a party guest who offers a “mermaid cauldron” posing in a gesture that reminds us of the figures of patrons that appear in the medieval polyptychs. 

Opening times:

Friday, February 17: 16-20h
Saturday, February 18: 16-20h
Tuesday, February 21: 16-20h