VASTO opened Prototypes, Pere IV on 16 October 2026 at Pere IV 125 in Barcelona's Poblenou district, with a private view on 15 October. Curated by the gallery's founder Carmen Riestra, the VASTO Prototypes Barcelona show brings together sixteen artists, designers and studios and is on view until 22 November 2026.
The title turns the usual idea of a prototype around. According to the gallery, a work can remain a prototype for as long as it keeps asking questions, so the selection mixes pieces still being tested, finished works and some shown before. The exhibition is organised by shared ideas rather than by discipline or medium, and each label replaces the standard Author / Title / Technique with Author / Piece / Intention.
Who is behind VASTO
VASTO was founded in 2022 by Carmen Riestra and works across contemporary art, collectible design and spatial practice. It started in its Home Gallery, a 540 m² industrial warehouse in Poblenou, and now runs a gallery programme, artistic projects and art advisory services across several spaces in the city.
The new venue on Pere IV is 550 m² with an 8.5 m ceiling. The gallery describes the building as a prototype itself: raw, unfinished and still being shaped, with exposed brick, iron structures, beams and ducts that several artists used as part of their installations.
The artists in Prototypes, Pere IV
The line-up includes Nora Aurrekoetxea, Anton Defant, Aleksandra Fixl, Esther Gatón, Lorenzo Iandelli, Jo Hyunseok, Max Milà Serra, Noëmi Orgaer and Orson van Beek, Alice Pandolfo, Mercedes Pimiento, the architecture studio p=0, Ritsch Sisters with Forever Studio, Naked Space, SSOP, Lana Von Thorn and Alícia Vogel.
Objects that question their own function
Berlin designer Anton Defant shows Replika, an Ulmer Hocker, the stool designed in 1954 for the Ulm School of Design, sealed inside a glass vitrine so that it keeps all its functions but can no longer be used. Seoul interior designer Jo Hyunseok presents Weld Marks, four lighting objects that test four ways of welding. He describes the series as "welding not as a means of concealing the joint, but as a process that reveals how materials are made and assembled."
Works built for the warehouse
SSOP hangs Airbag, six versions of a structureless lamp inflated by a fan, from the hoist of a gantry crane. Naked Space, the collective founded by Amber Zhang, builds a tent-like structure in aluminium and handmade Xuan paper. Esther Gatón suspends her bioplastic sculptures, made from agar-agar, sugar, spirulina and paprika poured over silk, among the scaffolding. The Austrian artist duo Ritsch Sisters and Forever Studio, the Rotterdam design duo represented by VASTO, split their aluminium bench Sitting With into two separate halves for the show.
When and where to see Prototypes, Pere IV
The exhibition is at Pere IV 125, 08005 Barcelona, until 22 November 2026. You can follow the programme on the gallery's Instagram.
Staff
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