Art Madrid'23 – 13th edition LOOP videoarts festival Barcelona

Between May 28 and June 6, Barcelona is full of screens to display the works of over 400 video artists from around the world. Most of these works, as has told Emilio Alvarez, co-director of LOOP in the press presentation, have been created in 2015 with two mottos: 
 
- What about Collecting Video art? 
- Beyond the Image.
 
 

Video art, films, are already part of the usual discussion of collectors, critics and experts from the art world and LOOP is been located, along these 13 years, heading the trends, raising new questions and showing new scenarios and trends worldwide. As they say in their program, "this type of work (video art) has become one of the predominant media in contemporary visual arts. Both within institutions and art centers and galleries, the position of video art goes from being peripheral to central and relevant, the audiences grow, as well as public and private collections. " Therefore, for the 2015 edition, the festival features 23 experts to nurture the theoretical and educational part of the event with various lectures and talks.

 

1) Isabel Rocamora in an essay of Faith in Jerusalem, photography by Shira Kela, 2015.

2)  Los Desnudos, 2011 Clarise Hahn

 

LOOP was born as a specialized video art fair in 2003, grew as a festival in 2004 and, responding to the interest of the public and professionals, it expanded their activities to the education and knowledge creating LOOP Studies in 2012 ... And its success is corroborated by the figures: 411 artists show works and participate in educational projects / workshops, 539 works (Festival and Fair), 541 local and international stakeholders, 85 local entities (museums, cultural institutions, galleries, art spaces) and 77 national and international entities collaborating

LOOP Barcelona develops its artistic activities by different areas of the city, being an inclusive event and based on partnership. Samples include exhibitions as Video-Regime. Collectors audiovisual in the Liceu Circle; L'Inconscient Pictòric, reviewing video art collection of Sorigué Foundation in the MNAC; Writting Diffraction in the Virreina Centre de la Imatge, and "Senses of place" in the Royal Artistic Circle of Barcelona, ??and that the organization has defined as "a festival within the festival" where art work is related to sound, film and new media technology.

Cell, 2014 Bongsu Park

But, the programs and film forums are the most popular activities and the special billboard of the Film Archive of Catalonia or Zumzeig room, joins the "Cityscreen", the wider program within the fair that is displayed in 15 galleries and 35 art spaces. In this edition, LOOP presents the new Discovery Prize supports the production of films and videos by international artists. These days Barcelona becomes one of the world capitals of video art.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.