Art Madrid'23 – 18th edition Photoespaña International Festival

To celebrate its 18th anniversary, the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts PHotoEspaña has chosen Latin America as exploration stage and an invitation, See You here, as a motto.
 

It was created as limited to Madrid and just turned 18 years, the festival is an international reference. The PHotoEspaña Festival, which celebrates its 18th edition from June 3 to August 30, will feature more than 100 international exhibitions in its various national offices (Madrid, Alcala de Henares, Alcobenda, Getafe, Lanzarote and Zaragoza) and international locations(Cascais, Lisbon Bogota, London, Panama, Paris and São Paulo) where you can enjoy the work of about 400 artists, half of them Latin Americans on this occasion, which include names like Julio Zadik, Korda, Ana Casas Broda, Martí Chambi, Graciela Iturbide and Miguel Rio Branco.

 

PHotoEspaña develops this time a monograph devoted to Latin American photography, following the path initiated in the 2014 edition of addressing a geographical area. As the organization explains on its website, an encyclopedic approach is impossible, so they want to present "a platform that shows the confluence and conflicts of the photographic medium in that territory." In addition, the exhibition program will analyze the development and complexity of Latin American photography, from its origins to the present, collecting cross visions and contextualizing themes and proposals.

For the general program, PHOTOESPAÑA has chose "a different viewpoint from the known" and as an example of this, surely, the exhibition of Alberto Diez Gutierrez KORDA, in the Cerralbo Museum in Madrid. In it, the legendary Cuban photographer famous by portraying Che Guevara, is revealed here as a commercial photographer specializing in enhancing feminine beauty.

Un Korda apenas conocido, el publicitario.

 

Also within the general program, this time in the Circulo de Bellas Artes, highlights  "Kinderwunsch" the exhibition of Ana Casas Broda (Granada, 1965) presenting a project of more than seven years where she works on motherhood as somewhat mixed experience through exploration and personal research. Another interesting exhibit is titled "Building worlds. Photography and architecture in the modern era, "and shows more than two hundred and fifty works of eighteen relevant photographers, from the 1930s to the present, that have changed the way we view architecture and to reflect on the world in which we live.

 

1) Imagen de Construyendo otros mundos.

2) Ana Casas Broda. Kinderwunsch.

 

In this edition, the PHotoEspaña Revelation Photographer Award (to photographers under 35 whose work is featured in the previous year) was for Aleix Plademunt. The jury, formed by a committee of 17 artists, curators and journalists, praised his technical precision, formal rigor and sensitivity in their work.

 

Fotografía de Aleix Plademunt.

 

PHE FESTIVAL OFF
 
This program shows the selection made by the galleries of Madrid for the festival and this time with the participation of 31 spaces, they promote works of artists of middle and younger generations. In this sense, the exhibition UNDER35 (in IvoryPress until July 18) presents the work of Laia Abril, Alberto Lizaralde, Javier Marquerie Thomas, Oscar Ruiz and Jordi Cirera Monzón, all of them under 35 years.
 
In BAT Gallery we can enjoy "Three women, three looks"... a feminine vision with photographs of Irene Irene Cruz (Madrid, 1987), Leticia Felgueroso (Madrid, 1963) and Sheila Pazos (Switzerland, 1986), three multidisciplinary artists, with their own style, their own imaginary universe that invite to be swayed by emotion and browse through your pictures as a world of expressions.

Sheila Pazos. Mirando al mar.

Meanwhile, Valverde Space Gallery presents "Latitudes" by the Photographer Luis Asin (Madrid, 1962) that makes a foray into the land of intimacy with a metaphorical story as a vehicle: images suggest poetic connections that are based on the biography of Asin but moving towards an evocative and polisémic meaning.

Within PHOTOESPAÑA you can also visit one of the largest collections of Latin American photography, comprising more than 160 works by 60 artists. It is the private collection of Anna Gamazo, wife of financier Juan Abelló, which can be seen for the first time in the municipal space CentroCentroCibeles.

 

 

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.