LAB 36 presents Manos a la obra, a group exhibition that explores diverse creative trades within the field of cultural production.

Through the work of eight young creators, the exhibition investigates hybrid artistic territories that border and play with the most established and expected codes of the contemporary art circuit. It maps a fragmented terrain where creation is conceived as drift, intersection, and experimentation. Here, languages become unruly, and design, illustration, ceramics, embroidery, and audiovisual media seek ways to rewrite themselves in dialogue with new technologies, hybrid supports, and expanded narratives.

The works of Grito, Marco Morano, Deathburger, Sawe, Robert Roman, Ecs, Teo Guillem, and Enric Sant are nourished by artistic practices developed outside the conventional gallery sphere, resonating instead with creative industries or productions intended for mass audiences. Video games, graphic design, comics, and graffiti are among the disciplines that inform and influence the style and proposals of these artists, whose engagement with contemporary art unfolds tangentially yet compellingly.

Manos a la obra invites reflection on this phenomenon: the visibility of a set of undeniably artistic practices and styles that, for various reasons, escape the canonical circuits of institutional artistic frameworks. Whether due to the absence of a 'marketable' material output, a more direct connection with the public, a practice grounded in collaboration, or an approach whose outcome aligns more closely with popular formats (industry, retail, publishing, or digital platforms), these forms are often positioned beyond the traditional field.

At the same time, the exhibition seeks to investigate formal and material access points that could serve as bridges between the gallery space and these external figures and realities. Each work acts as a vanishing point in an open cartography, where making is both a sensitive practice and a gesture of survival—a critical interference within normative systems of cultural production.

Thus, although all the participating artists share a creative drive and background, what distinguishes them is the breadth of trades they encompass and the multiplicity of roles and projects in which they are involved. Whether through murals, books, object design, visual commissions, or collaborations with the publishing or fashion industries, these artists embody the many ways in which talent can be placed in service of the wider cultural ecosystem.