Cultural ephemerid and urban phenomenon recognized worldwide, the German capital was and still is synonymous with change, with transmutation. LAB36 offers multiple and heterogeneous perspectives, in the same way the city does. Political, poetic, impossible and pondered visions converge.
A group of Spanish artists invites us to walk around the city, from the divided Berlin to the current urban environment. In Taste Point Charlie (1979), the filmic journey and the fantasy of trespassing broadcasted by an inquiring Miralda reveal the violence of a cleaved city, ten years before the fall of the Wall. On the other hand, Plensa brings us closer to the more solemn and human side of the metropolis through the work he produced in Berlin, in the 80’s. While Jordi Bernadó presents the aftermath of History, Chema Alvargonzález delivers a chronicle of collapse and shows us a newer Berlin too. The latter two are the ones who capture, by means of the photographic lens, the fragmented reality of a later city—prelude to a destiny that is as much uncertain as promising.
Addressing clouds
According to a renowned scientist of quantum physics, there is evidence that, having achieved the degree of concentration and will needed, any individual can direct the clouds. The event occurred on different parts of the world but has seldom been seen, since nowadays almost no one looks carefully at the sky.
However, many people have found quite accurate shapes in the clouds, but they remain ignoring its peculiar origin.
Galeria Senda will be participating in Art Brussels 2017 that will take place in the exhibition space Tour & Taxis. In this edition will be hosting artworks from the renowned artists: Stephan Balkenhol, Gao Xingjian, Jaume Plensa, José Pedro Croft, Ola Kolehmainen, Anthony Goicolea, James Clar, Oleg Dou and Peter Halley.
Cristal House (crystal house) is the name of a racing horse. In her new project, Anna Malagrida draws upon photography, text and video to carry out the attempted depletion of a place: a horse-race betting house located in the center of Paris. From the street and through the large windows, Malagrida shoots repetitive movements and the waiting of the gamblers. Located in the interior of the room, she meets them and carefully listens to them. Lured by great megalopolis, a large majority of the gamblers are migrants coming from all over the world dreaming of a better life. The notions of dreaming and the inherent hope to every gambler unfolds into the image of the one who migrates.
A strange game of reflections places the audience before the hopes of the hapless. Their words, reproduced in the text fragments, shape the lives and dreams that converge in this venue of encounter and gamble. From the interior of this Cristal House, the camera records through the windows a passage of the life in the streets, showing the movement of the city while revealing its multiculturalism and intense pace. Malagrida attempts to depict all every-day things and events that the camera manages to capture through different perspectives given by the windows. Thus, the betting house is transformed into a theatre of hope and the city into its scenery. Seductive, a promise of a better life, the metropolis gathering individuals coming from all over the world becomes a transit space, of fortuitous intersections, and a multiplier of solitudes.
Galería SENDA booth present the works of American-Cuban artist Anthony Goicolea with his most recents works Double Projection Shadow Portrait III and Anonymous Self-Portrait. For its part LAB 36 will show the characteristics lighting installations of the visual artist James Clar.
“Novos trabalhos, velhos territórios” will be the fourth solo exhibition by José Pedro Croft in Galeria SENDA. His work is based in sculptures and drawings, where he explores with different materials, colos and perspectives to create new volumes and an altered sense of space. The artist was the representative of Portugal on the las edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2016 and he will also represent his native country at this year’s Venice Biennale.
Galeria SENDA will participate in ARCOMadrid with works by Peter Halley, Anna Malagrida, Ola Kolehmainen, James Clar, Yago Hortal and Francis Lisa Ruyter. We will also exhibit pieces by Miralda and José Pedro Croft, participants of this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale. Finnaly, we will have works by major sculptors such as Jaume Plensa and Stephan Balkenhol.
Stand 9F08.
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
“Sketches of Spain” outlines a decade of studies by Kolehmainen of the most emblematic contemporary buildings in Spanish territory. Through his particular perspective, the artist reflects on the dialogue between building and light and the influences found in the works by Bofill, Mies van der Rohe or Ambasz.
