Art Madrid'23 – Alfonso de la Torre, new member of the Selection Committee AM16

 

 

Since its last edition, the fair has an independent committee of art professionals in charge of the analysis and evaluation of the proposals submitted by the applicants galleries.

 

The Selection Committee includes experts from the world of gallerism, curating, art collecting and art fairs consulting, and now from the criticism and theory of contemporary art, with the aim of shaping the General Programme of the fair to make it more complete, open, diverse and international.

 

In Art Madrid’16, the committee is made up by the specialist on international art market Angel Samblancat; the gallery owners Javier Lopez Velez (3 Punts Gallery, Barcelona) and Ricardo da Cruz Tenreiro (Art Lounge, Lisbon); the independent curator Carlos Delgado Mayordomo and the art critic Alfonso de la Torre. The team will meet in late October for viewing portfolios and proposals.

 

In the last edition of the fair, the selection committee reviewed more than a hundred proposals for national and international galleries. This year we expect to exceed that number and make the best possible program

 

ABOUT THE MEMBERS OF THE COMITTEE...

 

 

D. ÁNGEL SAMBLANCAT

Director of Editorial and Polígrafa Graphic&Print Art Gallery (Barcelona) for 40 years and member of the Direction Bureau in Joan Prats Art Gallery Barcelona) since its founding. Jury Member for the Triennial of Graphic Art in Grenchen (Switzerland) and a member of the Selection Committee for International Contemporary Art Fairs as Art Chicago (Illinois), Art Miami (Florida), Art Los Angeles (California), ARCO (Madrid ), Art Cologne Art Basel / Miami Beach (Florida).

 

 

 

D. JAVIER LÓPEZ VÉLEZ

Since 1994, he is the artistic director of 3 Punts Art Gallery, based in Barcelona and Berlin. Expert in Technical Drawing Projects and with studies in Sociology, he has been independent curator in various institutional exhibitions in Barcelona, Hospitalet and Andorra. Under his direction, the gallery organizes seven to eight individual exhibitions per year, with a clear evolution towards new artistic languages and where the work of curating and selecting art-works and artists is impeccable. As a gallery owner, participates in art fairs and events inside and outside our borders for nearly two decades.

 

 

D. RICARDO TENREIRO DA CRUZ.

Director of ArtLounge Art Gallery in Lisbon (Portugal). While he was in London, at an International Business school, he discovered the taste for painting and the power of art as a key factor in the increase of culture of the cities. Since these days, he is usual visitor in galleries and art fairs in order to find new artists that are worth bringing to Portugal. Nowadays, he is member of the Chamber of Commerce of Portugal- Singapore and he develops commercial and artistic

 

 

 

D. CARLOS DELGADO MAYORDOMO

BA in Art History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Coordinator of exhibition projects of the International Fund for the Arts Foundation / FiArt, responsible for exhibitions in Culture Department of the City of Las Rozas (Madrid). Writer in Xtrart, on-line art magazine and professor of Contemporary art and Culture in Aularte. Since 2008, he is freelance curator for museums and institutions in Spain and Latin America. Has developed, among others, Ciria’s exhibition “Rare paintings” (2008), “Agustí Centelles: Case report” (2009), “Synergies. Contemporary Latin American art in Spain”, “Storymakers” (2013), “David Trullo. Fauxtographies” (2013). "Ciria. Las puertas de Uaset" (2014). Curator of the ONE PROJECT program in Art Madrid.

 

 

D. ALFONSO DE LA TORRE

Theoretician and art critic, specialist in contemporary Spanish art. He has curated more than one hundred exhibitions and has published numerous essays and taught at various universities and institutions: MNCARS, Teruel Museum, University of Los Andes, University of Córdoba, University of Granada, University of Castilla-La Mancha and University La Sorbonne. He is the author of the detailed catalogs about “El Paso”, Manolo Millares (MNCARS and Fund. Azcona, 2004) and Manuel Rivera (Diputación de Granada and Fund. Azcona, 2009), and he has recently concluded its catalog about Pablo Palazuelo (MNCARS, MACBA, Palazuelo Foundation Fund. Azcona). Since 2005 he leads an annual program of artistic interventions in public space (“The Field of Cultural-El Corte Inglés”) during the week of ARCO, which has the support of Madrid City Council. Regularly participates in discussion forums ARCO, responsible for the graduates: “Contemporary art and sponsorship” (2012); “The new power of collectors” (2013); “What is art in times of crisis?” (2014) and “In the Collector privacy” (2015). He directed one of the most comprehensive studies on the birth and evolution of the art market in Spain since the war until today “The Spain of the XXI Century” (Foundation System). In 2012 he was invited by the University of the Sorbonne to the International Colloquium “Le travail du visible” (Hermann éditeurs, Paris 2014). He directs the collection “El Ojo que ve” (University of Cordoba-La Fábrica) of photographic essays. He is vice president of the Pilar Citoler Foundation, dealing with the conservation of the collection. The Ministry of Education and Culture appointed him as jury in the National Award of Art (2015).

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.