Art Madrid'26 – Blog

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles hosted the 21st edition of Art Madrid from March 4 to 8, once again consolidating its role as one of the must-see events of Madrid Art Week. Over the course of five days, the fair brought together 35 national and international galleries and more than 200 artists, turning the venue into a meeting point for gallerists, collectors, professionals, and lovers of contemporary art.

Discover comprehensive information about the artists and galleries participating in the 21st edition of Art Madrid. The catalog brings together a carefully curated selection of the works featured in this edition, along with key content and event details, making it an essential resource for engaging with its protagonists and gaining deeper insight into their artistic proposals.

Art Madrid presents the second edition of its Patronage Program, an initiative aimed at reinforcing its commitment to contemporary artistic production and the promotion of collecting. The program articulates several lines of support designed to enhance the visibility of participating artists, promote recognition of emerging careers, and consolidate sustainable relationships among artists, galleries, and collectors—thereby strengthening the professional ecosystem surrounding the fair.

OFF LINE is a performance piece that reflects on the fragility of the body in the digital age. Our relationship with the outside world is mediated by a screen, which distances us further and further from physical contact and interpersonal relationships. Focusing on creating a digital identity causes the body to distance itself from the physical world and lose its memory.

In Trayectoria, the artist proposes crossing the main corridor of the fair while dragging a large set of these objects, linked to one another and tied to the laces of her shoes. The route transforms this zone of transit into an active space, where body and materials generate new forms. The objects function as extensions of the moving body: they tense, divert, slow down, and reconfigure each step.

Oscurecer un papel is part of a series of actions in which I engage in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. In this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is reconfigured as it is voiced aloud, adopting a new form in the act of articulation.

Alta Factura is a performance that appropriates the symbolic framework of the fashion runway—a space traditionally associated with spectacle, display, and the finished product—in order to challenge and deconstruct it from within. Rather than celebrating the polished outcome, the work redirects attention to what typically remains unseen: the time invested, repetition, error, fragility, and the manual labor that underpins all processes of creation.

Art Madrid, committed to creating a space of articulation for artists working within the field of performance practices, presents: Abierto Infinito: Lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a project inspired by Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997). The proposal is situated within a theoretical framework that engages directly with these premises, understanding social interaction as a staged arena of carefully modulated performances designed to shape and influence the perception of others.

Nebrija University participates in the 21st edition of Art Madrid with a curatorial project that proposes a critical reflection on the relationship between artistic pedagogy, the market, and technology. Under the concept of Aesthetic Intelligence, the proposal positions itself as an alternative to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, prioritizing sensitivity, gesture, materiality, and experience as non-automatable forms of knowledge.

March transforms Madrid into a true hub of the art market, with fairs such as Art Madrid—an event we at Devesa have the privilege of supporting—characterized by a closer connection to private collecting and the Spanish art scene. In that context, it is no coincidence that a familiar question resurfaces whenever art ceases to be merely a passion and begins to occupy a stable place within a family’s or group’s wealth architecture: does it make sense to channel the acquisition, stewardship, and rotation of a collection through non-profit vehicles—foundations or associations—and, if so, what are the legal and tax boundaries of such a model?

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

Lecturas: Recorridos comisariados por Art Madrid'26 es una iniciativa de mediación cultural diseñada para acercar al público a las propuestas expositivas que presentan las galerías participantes en la edición. Su objetivo es transformar la experiencia de la feria en una oportunidad para reflexionar sobre el trabajo de los artistas que se presentan en la edición, analizar a través de sus obras las problemáticas actuales y despertar nuevas miradas en la sociedad, fomentando así una comprensión crítica y contextualizada del arte contemporáneo como instrumento de diálogo cultural y social.

As part of the Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program, the third edition of Open Booth is presented—a section conceived as a platform for emerging talent and aimed at artists whose practice develops outside traditional gallery representation circuits. In this edition, the project is led by artist Daniel Barrio (Cuba, 1988), who presents the intervention Despiece: Protocolo de Mutación.

At the 21st edition of Art Madrid, Liquitex renews its commitment to contemporary creation, reaffirming its position as a leading brand in professional acrylics and a strategic partner to both emerging and established artists.

Art Madrid’26 presents One Shot Collectors, a program sponsored by One Shot Hotels that returns to the fair -now in its sixth edition- with the goal of making contemporary art collecting more accessible and encouraging new and established collectors alike. The initiative is designed to support both art professionals and new audiences interested in starting or strengthening a collection by providing tools, knowledge, and specialized guidance.

El trabajo de Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) se inscribe en una genealogía del arte contemporáneo que interroga la tensión entre lo efímero y lo permanente, situando la práctica artística en un umbral donde naturaleza, tiempo y percepción convergen. Su investigación parte de un fenómeno geomorfológico aparentemente menor - las huellas en la arena generadas por la acción mareal- para convertirlo en un dispositivo poético de observación sensible del paisaje. La restricción temporal de la bajamar no actúa únicamente como condicionante técnico, sino como estructura conceptual que organiza el proceso creativo y lo alinea con una ética de atención y presencia radical.

The painting of Daniel Bum (Villena, Alicante, 1994) takes shape as a space for subjective elaboration, where the figure emerges not so much as a representational motif but as a vital necessity. The repetition of this frontal, silent character responds to an intimate process: painting becomes a strategy for navigating difficult emotional experiences—an insistent gesture that accompanies and alleviates feelings of loneliness. In this sense, the figure acts as a mediator between the artist and a complex emotional state, linking the practice of painting to a reconnection with childhood and to a vulnerable dimension of the self.

In the ecosystem of contemporary art fairs, where the acceleration of visual consumption threatens to drain meaning from even the most solid proposals, Art Madrid faces a challenge that is anything but minor: how to remain relevant without being lost in the noise. This is not merely about showing artworks; it is about articulating an experience of reading, about offering visitors something more than a succession of brief stimuli that are quickly forgotten. This edition of Art Madrid is played out precisely on that terrain: the persistence of the gaze. In contrast to easy spectacle or outdated rhetoric, many of the participating galleries commit to practices that demand time, attention, and a certain critical disposition from the viewer. There is no single dominant aesthetic or unified narrative; what emerges instead is a field of tensions in which painting insists on its continued relevance, the body is understood as a political archive, matter operates as a form of resistance, humor functions as a critical tool, and memory appears as an unstable territory.

The work of Julian Manzelli (Chu) (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974) is situated within a field of research in which art adopts methodologies close to scientific thinking without renouncing its poetic and speculative dimension. His practice is structured as an open process of experimentation, in which the studio functions as a laboratory: a space for trial, error, and verification, oriented less toward the attainment of certainties than toward the production of new forms of perception. In this sense, his work enters into dialogue with an epistemology of uncertainty, akin to philosophical traditions that understand knowledge as a process of becoming rather than closure.

Contemporary art has ceased to be an exclusive territory reserved for elites and has become an increasingly democratic and accessible space. In the context of fairs such as Art Madrid, which in 2026 brings together more than 200 artists from five continents, a new generation of collectors is emerging—one that challenges the traditional codes of the art market. But how do you make the leap from admirer to collector? What do you need to know before acquiring your first artwork?