Art Madrid'23 – Swab Emerging Art Fair in Barcelona

Imagen promocional de Swab2015

 

65 galleries, 22 countries, more than 100 emerging artists and new programs and disciplines make the eighth edition of Swab the one which consolidates this cool show in continuous search for new values.

 

 

Swab was born in 2006 as an initiative from the private collection Diezy7 Space Art in Barcelona. The art fair holds its 8th edition from 1 to 4 October at the Italian Pavilion of the Fira de Barcelona, ??and has become an annual event of international emerging art, well received by the public and critics. This response is what has encouraged the organization to create new programs in this edition.

 

Obra de Judas Arrieta en SWAB.

 

The General Program 2015 brings together a large number of established galleries and highly regarded in the global market of contemporary art galleries. It also provides an opportunity for a number of newly created galleries to participate in an international art fair.

 

Swab Seed, program curated by David Armengol, sets out a series of separate proposals that have made their way outside the institutions in cities such as Barcelona, ??Madrid and Berlin. The project has a dual registration. On the one hand, it is a physical space of collective presentation of separate spaces (working methods, artists, linked, specific projects), among which are El Palomar (Barcelona), Arts Coming (Barcelona), Me & the curiosity (Barcelona) , La Encantada Gallery (Barcelona), Halfhouse (Barcelona), The Green Parrot (Barcelona), Salón (Madrid) and Junefirst (Berlin). On the other hand, it presents a program of public lectures and round tables entitled Intensity and Survival: artistic practice from the independent. The structure of the talks raises an individual presentation of each of the spaces and a later debate in which they analyzed conditions, needs and common problems.

 


Imagen de SWAB Performance.

 

Swab Performance, curated by Juan Canela, shows specific actions and interventions related with the body, the time, space and action. With the participation of Mercedes Azpilicueta, Elena Bajo, Ely Daou, Alicia Frankovich, Lara Khaldi & Yazan Khalili, and Claudia Pages.


Swab Forum, in collaboration with De Appel Arts Centre (Amsterdam), presents a new program through which two former alumni of the Curatorial Programme of the Dutch center have selected different artists thet will dialogue with each other and work programs of the different galleries.


Swab Thinks is a space for reflection on emerging art with lectures, panel discussions, dialogues among collectors, to think together the transformations of the contemporary.


 


Imagen de SOLO Swab.

 

In SOLO Swab, curated by Direlia Lazo and Carolina Ariza, individual projects of Latin American artists are presented, with emphasis on the procedural practices and creative documentaries confronted with the official story. There are new programs as Swab 'Zh?ngguó: China's new photography' and Swab Drawing Applications, curated by Monica Alvarez Careaga. A bunch of eight individual artistic projects that show the transformation in the use of traditional drawing forms. The participating artists are Paula Rubio Infante, Laura González Cabrera, Cristina Ferrandez, Luis Macias, Juan Escudero, Theo Firmo, Gómez-Bueno and Gonzalo Elvira.

 

Imagen de Swab ‘Zh?ngguó: la nueva fotografía china’ 

 

 

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.