Lao Gabrielli

Lao Gabrielli is an Argentine visual artist and graphic designer born in Buenos Aires in 1971 and based in Mexico City since 2009. She studied graphic design at the University of Buenos Aires, where she also undertook architectural studies, before developing her artistic practice with painter Guillermo Roux. Training in art restoration with Mónica Tezanos Pinto further expanded her understanding of materials and technique, establishing a foundation for a practice centred on colour, geometry, and visual perception.

Vibrant colour and geometric abstraction define Gabrielli’s work. Through repetition, contrasting hues, and carefully arranged sequences, she creates compositions that appear to shift, expand, or vibrate. Her investigations connect with optical and kinetic art, particularly their interest in how movement can be suggested through static forms. The viewer’s position and the surrounding light become part of the experience, changing the apparent depth and rhythm of each composition.

Her material exploration extends across canvas, metal, paper, textiles, transparent acrylic, and mirrors. Reflective and translucent elements introduce additional layers, allowing light to interact with painted surfaces and complicate the distinction between image and object. Works such as Spectrum, painted on dichroic acrylic, and Cubo Cromático, executed on velvet, demonstrate how a change of surface can alter the behaviour of colour. These variations give her geometric vocabulary different physical and perceptual qualities.

Gabrielli has also brought this approach into collectible furniture through her collaboration with Breuer Estudio. Invited to reinterpret Arturo Verástegui’s Gor bench, she applied vivid colours and geometric patterns to its leather upholstery, transforming the functional piece into a three-dimensional setting for her visual research. Presented within Breuer’s Arte y Ebanistería collection at ZONAMACO in 2018, the collaboration connected her painting practice with the studio’s expertise in furniture and craftsmanship.

Her exhibitions include Color & Vibración at Galería Baga 06 in Mexico City and Chromatic Alterations, presented with RoFa Art Gallery at the Argentine Embassy in Washington, DC. She has participated in the Boston Biennial, the Joaquín Clausell Painting Biennial in Campeche, and public art initiatives including Mexicráneos. Across gallery exhibitions, functional objects, and public installations, Gabrielli explores how colour and geometric relationships can transform the experience of a surface and its surrounding space.