Gino Rubert
Son of the well-known Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós and the Mexican psychoanalyst and writer Magdalena Catala He studied Illustration at the Parsons School of New York and Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. In 1993 he won the Sala Parés Young Painting Prize. The same year he was also granted by the Spanish Academy in Rome in recognition of two hyper-realistic paintings. In 2008, three paintings of his were used to illustrate both Catalan and Spanish covers for Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. He has taught at several art schools and universities such as Massana and EINA in Barcelona, Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo or Universidad Nacional de Bogotá. Rubert is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a wide range of media, such as, painting, drawing, watercolor, video, installation or sculpture. Recently, he has been working on a series of paintings, drawings and little objects called “ex-votos” in reference to the homonymous Mexican devotional offers. He is mostly known for his particular collage technique combining acrylic painting with photography, holograms, fabric, thread, plastic, human hair and other elements. The use of old and recent photographic portraits, found in marketplaces around the world, downloaded from the Internet or shot and edited by him are ever-present in his works. Rubert cites the Post-Impressionists and their circle as his main influence, including Henri Rousseau, Bonnard, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Great European Masters like Fra Angelico, Jan van Eyck and Vermeer also influenced Rubert's painting. We can also find some references to avant-garde and contemporary artists such as Balthus, David Hockney, Alex Katz or Georg Baselitz. There are also visible parallels with the masters of Latin American Realismo Mágico and Surrealismo, including Frida Kahlo, Carrington, and Remedios Varo. Rubert's ideology stems from Spanish painting tradition where images are meant to create the illusion of a different space or dimension. Rubert's works have an ironic sense of humor and are charged with a subtle and naïf eroticism. Interested in personal and sentimental complexities he explores romance and relationships in contemporary society digging deep into love, sex and couple. Rubert's canvases often have different layers of meaning. He describes himself as “a creator of both beautiful and annoying” images that elude/avoid any narrative or lineal interpretation and he says he tries “to make images that suggest something instead of explaining a particular story”. His works have been exhibited in several museums, galleries and cultural centers worldwide such as the Akioshiday Museum (Japan), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Barcelona). He is represented in numerous museums and collections. In 2011, his first novel, “Apio. Notas Caninas”, was published and awarded New Talent Literature Prize by FNAC.
Work
He lives and works in Barcelona, Berlin and Cuernavaca (Mexico). Rubert has worked in the media of painting, video and installation art.