Art Madrid'23 – Art Paris Contemporary Art Fair 2016

 

 

 

The numbers are staggering: 56 thousand visitors, 143 galleries from 22 countries and more than 2,000 artists represented have filled the 6,500 m2 of the Paris Grand Palais. The art fair Art Paris is taken spring very seriously and celebrates the concept coined by themselves, "cosmopolitan regionalism", a concept that encompasses the best of French art with the best proposals of major European cities and territories more distant as Azerbaijan, Colombia, Iran and, of course, Korea, this year's guest country at the Paris fair.

 

 

 

 

Open to all forms of artistic expression, including the design, Art Paris offers a complete picture of art from the postwar period to contemporary art without forgetting the sections dedicated to new discoveries.

 

 

 

The "Promises" section offered the chance to discover emerging talent in solo-show format and galleries with less than 5 years and have never participated before in the show. This year have participated in this Section 12 galleries of Azerbaijan, Brussels, Marseille, London, Paris and Zurich. Digital art has figured prominently at the fair with monumental night projections on the facade of the Grand Palais place.

 

 

 

 

Art Paris, more open to all audiences and new collectors than the elite of the FIAC event, has had the VIP program "Spring in Paris" for collectors and professionals that has included a selection of the best shows and culture events nowadays. The fair has not forgotten the general public and it has developed the BUS EXPO, a traveling exhibition developed in collaboration with Air France to show some of the emerging proposals for the show to wider range of stakeholders and fans art possible. His goal: to make contemporary art accessible to all audiences.

 

This year at Art Paris has only participated a Spanish gallery, Miquel Alzueta, from  Barcelona.

 

 

 

South Korea, as guest of honour, has offered a sample of galleries from Seoul, as well as works of individual artists -80 in all - working with galleries around the world. As has assured the commissioner Chung Sang-A "this selection reveals the richness of Korean art scene with works from 1960 to the current boom in contemporary creativity."
 

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.