Art Madrid'23 – 45 edition of Art Basel

The Swiss city of Basel, a daily quiet community of less than 200,000 people, becomes each year the hub of international contemporary art. Basel is probably the most important art fair in the world and we must be there.
 
From 18 to 21 June, Basel celebrates the 45th anniversary of Art Basel and makes of its streets and squares the place of recreation for thousands of collectors, artists, photographers, journalists, art critics, museum directors, etc ... that roam the fairs (Basel and the various satellite fairs: LIST - dedicated since 1996 to young galleries - VOLTA - founded in 2005 and dedicated to emerging art - Scope and The Solo Project) hungry for unique pieces. This year, Art Basel involves about 300 galleries with works by 4,000 artists from long experience and prestige in the twentieth century and also the names of young artists of the XXI century, including installation, performance, film,...
Art Basel was born in 1970 as an alliance between several galleries and today is a brand in itself, with branches as Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel Hong Kong, and a reference for artists and curators from around the world that should display their best proposals to impress the exclusive selection committee of Art Basel. "It's like being in the Olympics," assures these days the New York gallery owner Fergus McCaffrey, "or as the European Champions League, in which every gallery and artist want desperately to compete."
 
With different sections: Galleries (the General Programme with 222 galleries), Feature (30 curated galleries), Statemets (16 galleries with emerging art), Unlimited (section on large specific formats, sculpture, installations, performances, ...), Film (curated, video art, film, documentary,...). Art Basel is the thermometer with which is measured the international art market temperature.

Imagen sección Unlimited: Jeppe Hein, 360º Illusion.

Obra de Ai Wei Wei, Stacked 2012.

 

For this edition of 2015, the Spanish presence in Basel is seen in virtually all the fairs, and in Art Basel will be Parra & Romero (which makes for the first time) and other veterans such as Helga de Alvear, Juana de Aizpuru, Polígrafa Graphic Work, Elvira González and ProjecteSD.

Vista del stand de OBRA GRÁFICA ORIGINAL en Basel.
 
 
 
In LISTE (79 galleries from 31 countries), where Latin American presence is very significant with the participation of 80M2 (Lima); Document-Art (Buenos Aires); Vision Institute (Bogotá); Labor and Gaga (Mexico DF); Jacqueline Martins (Sao Paulo) and Project Ultraviolet (Guatemala), Spain is represented with only two galleries: Maisterravalbuena and NoguerasBlanchard.
 
VOLTA (69 exhibitors from 19 countries), however, provides the proposed 7 Spanish galleries: DNA Gallery (Barcelona); Alarcon Criado (Sevilla); Rosa Santos (Valencia); Arte Nueve (Murcia); Angeles Baños (Badajoz); Espacio Valverde, Ponce + Robles (Madrid). Among the artists in Volta and represented by these galleries are Carlos Aires, Eugenio Merino, Avelino Sala, Sergio Porlán, Julia Calvo, Andres Pachon, Susanne SD Themlitz, Elena Alonso, Luis Vassallo, Alejandro Botubol, Françoise Vanneraud, Manuel Caeiro, Leslie Smith, Irene Grau and Raul Diaz. To all, very lucky.
Obra de Andrés Pachón, con Angeles Baños Galería en VOLTA.

 

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.