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.
Galeria Senda will participate on the 11th edition of Contemporary Istanbul with a selection of works by artists such as Peter Halley, AES+F, Francis Lisa Ruyter, Ola Kolehmainen, among others. Join us at Booth A1-115!
Galeria Senda will have its first collaboration with the acclaimed Turkish photographer Ahmet Ertug in Istanbul, his hometown, with a show of his renowned large-format photographs of the Byzantine and Ottoman architecture and art.
With 112 galleries from 28 countries, viennacontemporary, is the largest and most prominent art fair in the region, the highest concentration of Eastern European galleries worldwide. Senda participates for the first time in these event, presenting a solo show of the recognized Russian artists Oleg Dou.
Jaume Plensa presents a work of friendly confrontments: between what is shown and what is hidden, between the imprints of the past and the opening towards the future, between nature’s formations and man’s creation; and between sonorous vibration and the most intimate realms of silence. After seven years without exhibiting in a gallery in Barcelona, the artist will have his first solo show at Galeria SENDA, coinciding with our 25th anniversary.
Entrails of an allegorical forest are revealed through sculptures of young female faces. A face is like a tree: within the forest of social collectiveness, each one maintains its individuality. The girls close their eyes and their fleeting beauty stays immortalized. The sculptor elongates the heads in order to distance them from their materiality, presenting them with a more totemic and spiritual quality. This way, he portrays introspection and contemplation towards man’s most profound inner self.
The white pieces Lou, Duna, and Isabella are sculpted in a wooden mold, which then is transferred to bronze and covered with a white patina. Sustained on a base, the faces lose their weight and seem to be floating on the ground. His Isabella, made with basalt, suggests a blend between organic materials and human intervention, and the dark tones create chromatic contrasts with his white pieces. This way, Plensa completely encloses the show by extending the paper support to the wall, integrating the gallery’s space with his work to explore the possibilities of fusion between drawing, sculpture, and architecture.
With this exhibition, Plensa wishes that the audience connects with the pieces in the same way that he finds inspiration to work. “It is an exhibition that demands solitude. Sculpture is a pathway that comes from yourself, goes towards yourself, and is with yourself.”
With 112 galleries from 28 countries, viennacontemporary, is the largest and most prominent art fair in the region, the highest concentration of Eastern European galleries worldwide. Senda participates for the first time in these event, presenting a solo show of one the icons of 80´s Lisa Ruyter.
Simulacrum is Anthony Goicolea’s second solo exhibition at Galeria Senda. Known for his versatile profile, this artist focuses on a wide spectrum of medium in his creation that range from digitally manipulated landscapes to paintings that reflect beautiful bodylines. He is inspired by the interaction with nature and themes about identity and migration. The artist fully immerses himself into his work to demonstrate the good and evil, capturing both what is beautiful and what is intensely grotesque, -things that can attract and repulse.
By mastering the techniques of graphite and oil in his recent series Anonymous Portraits, dedicated to the human body, the artist depicts it, representing its gestures and lines in movement. On the other hand, his landscapes range from dream-like woodland environments to vast urban and industrial wastelands. The use of Mylar paper, a semi-translucent material, allows Goicolea to play with layers of shades and paint for both the creation of colourful landscapes and the exploration of gracious delicate movements.
The Phosphorescence exhibition shows a series of paintings that focus on the isolation of the individual in our society. The series reflects situations of absolute intimacy where the subject is totally isolated from all surroundings and is immersed in the light emitted by certain electronic devices.
Light takes on a spiritual connotation. If someone unaware of the meaning of the screen itself were to observe the scenes that make up Phosphorescence, they would think something magical or mystical was happening.
Silence, stillness, calm. The invasion of the intimate space.
The characters appear from the shadows and are immersed in this light that traps them. The subtlety of the darkness makes their faces appear blurred, and lose their identity, in a metaphor for depersonalisation.
“A phosphorescent jewel gives off its glow and colour in the dark and loses its beauty in the light of day. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows)
Place: LAB 36, Calle Trafalgar 36, Barcelona.
Visiting hours: Tuesday – Friday 4pm to 8pm
When speaking about method, the repetition is mentioned, but rarely the insistence. To insist is synonymous of to research, and at the same time implies the development of an almost unbearable continuity sustained by the nerve, by a reliance which knows it will find a reward, not only in the effect, but also in the construction of a character. This exhibition explores -from the work of an artist devoted to painting-, the possibility of a different contemporary world, open to an esthetic that does not allow any kind of assimilation to our present and, thus, it opens itself in a radical way to futurity.
