A few hours before the opening of doors - on Wednesday, February 21 - the atmosphere within one of the great fairs of the Week of Art is exciting. Come to Art Madrid'18 to enjoy art like never before!

Foto de la pasada edición en Art Madrid'17

Carpet, cartels, paint, the staircase, be careful with that photograph... There are many months of work that precede the celebration of an event such as Art Madrid, one of the great fairs of the Art Week in Madrid, work of selection, contact and management of the participating galleries, the work of communication, the design of the graphic elements, the plan, the licenses, the technical sheets, the prices, the sending of invitations, the calendars, the parallel activities ... but at this point we would give our kingdom by a simple nail! A few hours before the opening of Art Madrid - tomorrow, Wednesday, February 21st at 11:00 am we open the doors of the CentroCentro Glass Gallery, and at 1:00 a wine will be served for the guests - all are nerves, but also an enormous confidence in the work done and in those who have helped us make it possible, our sponsors Suarez and Liquitex (who will have two spaces in the AM18 lounge area with activities that we will announce each day), our collaborator Ink and Movement, our media partner official Cultura Inquieta, or brands such as La Virgen brewery or the Pago de Cirsus winery that decided to ally with the fair for years and still accompany us.

At the official opening we will have the presence, among others, of the ambassadors of Germany, Brazil, Ukraine, France, Switzerland, Italy, Chile and the Ambassadors of Costa Rica and Jordan, example of the acceptance, Mr. Ryan Matheny Garrido, Aggregate Cultural Center of the Embassy of the United States, a good example of the importance that the fair already has among collectors and foreign professionals.

Foto de la pasada edición en Art Madrid'17

On the part of local institutions have confirmed their attendance D. Felipe Llamas, Chief of Staff of the Mayor's Office of Madrid and Dª. María Carmen Castell Díaz, Member of the Ordinary Permanent Commission of Culture and Sports of the Madrid City Council, as well as Dª. Alicia Durántez de Irezabal, D.G. of Cultural Heritage Community of Madrid. Subdirectorate General for Dissemination and Management and Dª. Elisa de Cabo de la Vega Deputy Director General for the Protection of the Historical Heritage of the Ministry of Culture MECD.

As a representation of cultural institutions and foundations we will have Juan Barja, Director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Javier del Campo of Fundación Caja de Burgos, with Dª. Fátima Sánchez Santiago, Director of Projects and Education Area of ​​the Botín Foundation, Dª. Leticia Martín, Manager Atlantic Center of Modern Art-CAAM, Mr. D. Michel Bertrand, Director of the Casa Velázquez, Dª. Laura Ramón Brogeras, manager of the Art Collection of the Fundación Telefónica or Dª. Elena Alonso, Director Carlos Amberes Foundation.

We are waiting for you all in # ArtMadrid18

Thirteen years have passed since its beginnings, and in all this time the Video Art Festival PROYECTOR has grown and consolidated its position as an essential event in this discipline. Since its inception, the initiative has tried to give visibility to a discipline that has always been relegated to the background in the usual exhibition circuits. Although video creation is not new, since it emerged by its own in the 60s of last century, the way to get to know it and enjoy it has not always been easy. On many occasions, the exhibitions only included a few isolated pieces within the main route, as if the video was the anecdotal contribution to the whole. However, our daily lives are invaded by moving images, and there is a paradox that video art, despite being a format of artistic expression very much in tune with the habits of today's society, remains a minority discipline

Frame from “Hel City”, by Gregorio Méndez Sáez, 2019

To some extent, PROYECTOR was born to reverse this situation, to value video as a creative format and to offer a wide, itinerant space to host a multitude of proposals, coming from inside and outside our borders. In this time, the growth of the festival has led it to travel the world, but also, to be a benchmark that each year arouses more interest. In the open call to receive proposals, they reach almost half a thousand, and a hundred works selected by the jury are a representative sample of different ways of understanding video creation, with pieces mainly from Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

In turn, PROYECTOR wants to be more than a video showcase and offers a large program with talks, workshops, masterclasses, meetings with artists, visits and concerts. A complete experience that always has the moving image as a backdrop.

El Instante Francisco Ruiz de Infante. El bosque que se mueve (errores de medida)

In this evolution, another circumstance stands out: video is a creative format that has its own codes, but it is also one of the disciplines most open to artistic hybridization and the widening of uses. The video may, therefore, be the genuine idea of an author who conceives an autonomous project to be carried out in this format, but it can also be the complementary result of an action or the documentary record of a previous performance being recorded to guarantee its survival. The versatility of the moving image and the potential that it has acquired in recent years allows us today to speak of numerous branches of art that focus on the fusion of languages and the integration of techniques and methodologies from other sectors, and in many of them, the video is still a cornerstone. So it is with technological art, interactive sound art, performance recording, the transformation from big data to image, artificial intelligence, and a long etcetera. Precisely for this reason, PROYECTOR offers a panoramic vision of this reality, with an extremely interesting program that plays with the variety and wealth of proposals.

Frame from “Herdança”, by Thiago Rocha Pitta, 2007

The 2020 edition will run from September 9th to 20th. As usual, the program displays in various venues throughout the city of Madrid, each of which will house a small section of the activities. This year the festival will count with the collaboration of the Casa Árabe, White Lab, Cruce, El Instante Fundación, ¡ésta es una PLAZA!, Extensión AVAM (Matadero Madrid), Institut Français de Madrid, Medialab Prado, Quinta del Sordo, Sala Alcalá 31, Sala El Águila, Secuencia de Inútiles and White Lab, in addition to the collaboration of the INELCOM Collection and the video art collection of Teresa Sapey.

The festival is also the ideal place to articulate the cultural fabric, since it involves numerous professionals in the sector, from curators to creators, from centres managers to critics and teachers. The 2020 program also has the collaboration of the FUSO Festival and the Museo Reina Sofía, which are providing some of their pieces for the exhibition.

In short, an appointment that lovers of contemporary art should not miss and that promises many novelties in this 13th edition.