In this new series of large-format paintings, Gino Rubert portrays the world of art: its places, actors and events. The artist in society and in intimacy. To do so, he uses the rhetoric of meta-painting (the painting inside the painting) and also images where we see art galleries full of people attending an inauguration and other empty galleries that only have pictures resting on the floor and facing the wall. On the one hand, from the series The place to be, he talks about social life, glamour and shows business through baroque references such as the variegated horror vacui or symbols typical of Vanitas such as the skull or the soap bubble. On the other hand, the series To be or not to be reflects on the silence, solitude, and vertigo that invades the artist before the leap into the void that represents the night of the premiere.

“Even if we are not, are we? If no one looks at us, do we exist?” Gino Rubert

 

As an introduction to the exhibition in which light, colour, and drawing prevail over conceptual drifts, we find a large-format painting that presents the interior of an empty art gallery. In front of it, hundreds of photos and documents archived according to a precise but indecipherable criterion, more reminiscent of the secret record of an obsessive scientist than the photographic archive of an artist. With this scenic installation, Gino Rubert invites us to put ourselves in his place for a moment to understand his work process: “…I usually begin the paintings by spreading out photographic portraits on the canvas (some that I buy in flea markets, others that I have downloaded from the internet or, the most, that I have taken myself). And so, between those characters and myself, we are configuring a scene without previous ideas in such a way that finally the chemistry between those characters/souls and a point of scene direction on my part would be the ingredients of a cake that a priori I never know what form it will have or what it will taste like…”.

Following the trail of previous experimentations on collage and trompe l’oeil such as the use of natural hair in his exhibition Irma Lentamente (2009) or the introduction of text in Exvoto (2014), in the present The place to be or not to be, Gino Rubert introduces lighting on the back of some paintings in order to achieve a greater illusion of depth. As the artist says: “…I have always been particularly interested in that original ambition-function of painting to create the illusion of space; the process of translating with tricks, laws, and ingenuity, the world we perceive in three dimensions to the two-dimensional plane on which we draw…”.

Parallel to the exhibition, we will celebrate the publication of  Sí, quiero edited by Lunwerg and which presents an unusual and exciting portrait of sentimental relationships, with a series of events such as the presentation of the book and a round table.

The Mediterranean Sea is the reservoir of civilization – its heart has pumped people, cultures, and religions from shore to shore like blood. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians flowed north, the Romans and Crusaders south, the Genoese east, Byzantines west, the Islamic Caliphates east, west, north, and south. Sicily is right in the middle and the waves of storms of all civilizations have splashed on her shores. This is still happening today.

The Mediterranean Sea is once again the epicenter of ideological contradiction. War has pushed refugees and migrants who, saving themselves, have floated and swum across it to confront Europe with a difficult choice. (In ancient myth Europa herself was also forced to cross this sea). Their choice has already led to politically charged and ideological confrontations, to the polarization of public opinion and to the rise of xenophobia and ethnic violence.

This tragic situation has become a political conflict as well as the subject of negotiation and ideological speculation. In this form, it has been transmitted by media as a meme in what is now described as ‘post-truth’. The ethical situation that has unfolded out of this is paradoxical, to say the least.

Making porcelain figurines on this subject could be thought an extreme manifestation of this paradox yet, through its distance, an artistic image may be more radical than reality itself because it can push conceptual limits.

Porcelain has always been a symbol of contentment and bourgeois comfort. The recent waves of migrations have confronted Europe with a dilemma: whether to accept refugees – allowing them to enter at the cost of the material and psychological comfort of their hosts; or to reject them in an immoral, inhumane, and cynical act that would undermine the co-operative ethical basis of Europe itself.

Comfort is both fallible and fragile, like the porcelain that is associated with it. Kept safe for generations in high places, porcelain figurines are attentively guarded but their fragility encapsulates the threat of instantaneous loss. They shatter easily.

The chosen form and material of these works contrast with the drama of what is unfolding in the Mediterranean today, and, by doing so, point to it. A reflected ray of light illuminates better than a direct one. We think that this holds true concerning this work.

Edited by David Elliott

In his work, Miguel Angel Ríos pairs a rigorous conceptual approach with a meticulously constructed, often handmade aesthetic. Since the 1970s, he has made work about the concept of the “Latin American,” using this idea as both an artistic strategy and a political problem. Since the early-2000s, Ríos has also delved into the medium of video to create symbolic narratives about human experience, violence, and mortality.

LANDLOCKED: Bolivia has suffered since several centuries access block to the Pacific Ocean. The video Landlocked is a Metaphor of desire of the unreachable. Dogs of the high mountains from the Andes foothills, were trained to dig and execute their work, creating an illusion to get to the Ocean.

The exhibition MIRALDA THREE PROJECTS (NYC-MIA-BCN) will present original works, records and documentary archives of The Last Ingredients (MIA), Apocalypsis Lamb (NY-BCN) and Santa Eulalia. 175 (BCN).

The Last Ingredients was a performance of a procession of vehicles and a public feast in Miami in 2016, which celebrated the opening of the Faena Forum Art Center of Rem Koolhaas. The Bedspread Apocalypsis Lamb was part of the Honeymoon project in which an imaginary wedding between the Statue of Liberty of NY and the Columbus Monument of Barcelona was held; In 1989 the Bedspread took part in the Columbus Day tour in New York City and in 1995 hundreds of people carried it to the MNAC where was raised and in which it remains as part of the permanent collection. Finally, Santa Eulalia. 175 consisted of a performance with a procession of 80 musicians and 150 banners, as well as a series of festive events on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of Santa Eulalia store in 2018.

Photos, drawings, videos, objects, collages, etc., will be shown as record material and this will allow the viewer to get an idea of the scope and complexity of each of these works with the public intervention of participatory and processional character and that characterizes the artist.