We share with you our particular selection of exhibitions in Madrid. They are not all of them, but let’s take the lead from here.

“Lujo y luto”, by Estefanía Martín Sáenz, at the ABC Museum of Illustration.

Within the program "Connections" started seven years ago by the museum in collaboration with the Santander Foundation, a guest artist is invited to develop a creative project inspired by two works. On this occasion, the chosen pieces were a still life by Juan de Arellano from the Banco Santander collection and a cover of "Blanco y Negro" by Manuel Escudero, belonging to the museum's collection. Starting from these two works, Estefanía Martín has tackled a proposal that plays with the concepts that give the title to the exhibition. Luxury and mourning live together in compositions with oriental reminiscences and works that represent very well her style, with floral motifs, embroidery and fabrics. Until September 30th.

"Victor Vasarely. The birth of Op Art ", at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

This exhibition suggests a journey through the career of this creator of Hungarian origin that settled in Paris, from his beginnings until the end of his career. A paradigmatic figure when defining this style that, although ephemeral, has enriched the postmodern artistic movements of the first half of the 20th century. Until September 9th. More information here

Victor Vasarely, Amir "(Rima)", 1953, Vasarely Múzeum, Budapest

"Eusebio Sempere" at the Reina Sofia Museum

This retrospective dedicated to Sempere approaches the career of this artist whose work shows connections with kinetic art, a movement in full bloom in Paris in the mid-50s, a time that marked his departure as a recognised artist. From that moment on, Sempere began his international projection, with exhibitions inside and outside the country that consolidate it as a reference creator of national geometric art. Until September 17th.

Eusebio Sempere, “El reloj”, 1966.

"In an instant, Morocco", in the Arab House

Within the program of PhotoEspaña 2018, Casa Árabe organises this exhibition with works by nine Moroccan photographers who portray the daily reality of this country offering a vision of its society, customs and day to day life unknown for many. An invitation to get to know more closely the people of the neighbouring country and get closer to the pulse of its contemporary production. Until September 23rd.

M’hamed Kilito. Destinies, 2017 © M’hamed Kilito

"Views of Rome", by Henryk Dąbrowski and the Lázaro Collection, at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum

This exhibition proposes a dialogue between the works of Henryk Dąbrowski on the city of Rome, a renowned Polish architect, and the pieces that make up the collection Lázaro Galdiano, who was also passionate about this Italian city. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Polish Institute of Culture and the Embassy of Poland and was curated by Carmen Espinosa, chief curator of the museum. Until September 9th.

"Auschwitz. Not a long time ago. Not far away ", Arte Canal Exhibition Center of Madrid.

Although it is hard to face this period of our recent history turned into a tragedy of unimaginable magnitudes, it is necessary to remember not to forget, not to repeat in the future, the mistakes of the past. The exhibition is organised by the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau and arrives in Spain in collaboration with the company Musealia. Our country is the first stop of this macro exhibition that will travel to thirteen other European and North American cities. Until October 7th.

Pawel Sawicki © Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum - Musealia

One of the proposals included in the calendar of the “Art Madrid-Proyector'20” program was the organisation of several meetings with artists within the fair. This gave visitors the opportunity to get to know their work better and open a personal dialogue with them after the presentation of their last lines of work. From Wednesday 26th to Saturday 29th of February, we had the participation of Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Fernando Baena, Mario Santamaría and Maia Navas, a group of creators who work with the moving image, but also with the installation, technological art, performance and video art.

Abelardo Gil-Fournier's work revolves around the hybridization between the real and the sensible. This artist and researcher approaches this question in his works from a perspective in which perception, image and material production merge. Both his artistic and research practice deal with issues related to land use and plant growth without losing sight of these three points of interest. This results in works that incorporate the presence of nature from various perspectives, sometimes as a space of experimentation in which to reflect on the connection between art and politics, the relationship of the human being with the environment or the criteria for landscape intervention.

During his presentation on Wednesday 26th, Abelardo told us about some of his latest projects, in which the presence of technology is key to offering an artistic interpretation of the individual's impact into the territory. All this affects issues such as agricultural techniques, the progressive deforestation or the exploitation of land resources. The result is colour-coded pattern drawings that break down the analyzed landscape and offer a more visual and technology-based reinterpretation of these human behaviours. In addition, in this meeting, the artist explained his work “The Quivering of the Reed”, an installation that mixes video image, sound and material elements, and that plays the role of mixing the sensory with the real.

Abelardo Gil-Fournier

Fernando Baena shared a talk with us on the afternoon of Thursday 27th. This artist has focused a large part of his work on performance, happening and video pieces, many of them designed to capture the result of the action and give the work a second life in a new format. The main subjects that monopolize his work range from the treatment of sexuality and gender issues, to migratory movements and the drama of refugees, the exercise of political freedom and thought ... all of them are far-reaching issues that Fernando addresses from a familiar approach, with the use of common materials and recognizable environments. Another of the characteristics of his work is the presence of Marianela León in many of his pieces, a performer who has been collaborating with Fernando for many years until becoming almost an alter ego of himself and starring in most actions that take place in public spaces.

In this meeting, Fernando was able to explain part of his creative processes and to highlight a key aspect to the performance artist: to understand the reaction of the public. In this way, the impact of a work conceived from the theoretical plane is also analyzed, the meaning of which can completely change depending on the viewer's perception. As he himself explained in the talk regarding his piece "Balsa":

"What started out as a performance with an established script ended up being a happening in which the public participated with sometimes unusual reactions".

For his part, Mario Santamaría, who was with us on February 28th, shared with us a completely different work from Fernando's. This artist is focused on the analysis of the use of data, the feeling of manipulation and lack of control over our information that is produced in the digital medium and the desire to transform into something real some ideas as ethereal and commonplace today as the use of virtual storage clouds, the location of web pages or the data flow over the Internet. Much of his work, documented on video or transformed into technological facilities, is a form of research on the impact of the digital medium on our daily lives. His desire to bring these terms to the material plane, which we handle in our language today without really understanding their meaning, has led him to visit server bunkers, storage warehouses, in addition to tracking the exact location of the servers that host his own website to find isolated places far away from humanity.

Mario proposed a material trip to this reality to demonstrate that we are facing a very fragile system, whose durability is sensitive to natural phenomena, as evidenced by some of the documentation work carried out, where he rescued images of wild animals entering these data centres and endangering the livelihood of the digital world.

Mario Santamaría

Finally, Maia Navas, recently arrived from Argentina, shared with us the afternoon of Saturday 29th in a chat in which she told us about her creative work as well as her experience at the head of Play-Videoarte, a festival entirely dedicated to this discipline that she co-founded in 2012, and that in these six editions has combined an annual exhibition with a program of activities that take place in the City of Corrientes (Argentina), at the Cultural Centre of the University Extension that depends on the National University of the Northeast (UNNE).

Maia has a degree in psychology, as well as a degree in arts and technology, and combine her artistic career with teaching. The impact of psychology among her work topics is evident, and some of her video works try to delve into disturbing and perplexing aspects of human behaviour, such as the series "Procedures" that we could watch during the presentation. In it, the artist portrays the daily lives of people affected by OCD syndrome with an excellent visual narrative that puts the accent, almost with a cinematographic vision, on the personal experience of this phenomenon.

Maia Navas, foto de Marc Cisneros

From Art Madrid, we want to thank all these artists for sharing their creative experience with us and giving us the opportunity to dialogue with them about their present and future projects.