We have everything ready to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Art Madrid! The most festive and dynamic edition is ready to open its doors and celebrate contemporary art in style. Painting, photography, sculpture, video art, performance and artistic meetings make up the most extensive and varied programme of Art Madrid to date.

In this edition, Art Madrid is defined by its open and immersive character. An event full of movement where besides enjoying a wide program of exhibitors with an outstanding international perspective we will have an intensive program dedicated to new media, action art and performance thanks to the collaboration with the video art platform PROYECTOR and under the curatorship of its director, Mario Gutiérrez Cru.

Mario Soria

Mind genius, 2019

Óleo sobre madera y juguetes de plástico

98 x 27cm

Jorg Karg

Surrender, 2017

Printing by pigment under acrylic glass on aluminum dibond

80 x 80cm

This year Art Madrid has incorporated new national and international galleries. With a marked global commitment, Art Madrid counts for the first time with the Parisian Galerie LJ and the Italian Galleria Stefano Forni in Bologna. The German presence also stands out with the incorporation of Urban Spree (Berlin) and Luisa Catucci Gallery (Berlin) and the special Austrian participation of Offspace | galerie panoptikum (Gilgenberg). From the other side of the ocean lands the Ecuadorian gallery Más ARTE Galería (Quito). In the national participation, important exhibitors such as N2 and Pigment Gallery from Barcelona, as well as es.Arte Gallery, from Malaga, representing the south of the peninsula, will make their debut.

Art Madrid continues its commitment to national galleries that have already shown great weight at the fair and that could not be missed with their new proposals for this 15th edition: Madrid's Galería Kreisler, Marita Segovia, Soraya Cartategui, Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo and Galería Hispánica Contemporánea. From Asturias, Aurora Vigil-Escalera (Gijón), Bea Villamarín (Gijón) and Arancha Osoro (Oviedo). Luisa Pita (Santiago de Compostela) and Moret Art (A Coruña) in Galicia and Espiral Gallery (Noja, Cantabria) in the north of Spain, Kurt Art Gallery (Guipúzcoa) and Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero, Burgos). From Barcelona 3 Punts, Miquel Alzueta, Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo and Zielinsky, as well as from Valencia the new proposals of Alba Cabrera Gallery and Shiras Galería.

Mari Quiñonero

No.130, 2018

Pastel sobre papel

60 x 42cm

Onay Rosquet

Tuesday, 2018

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

The Portuguese galleries Art Lounge (Lisbon), Paulo Nunes-Arte Contemporânea (Vila Franca de Xira), Galeria São Mamede (Lisbon/Oporto) and Nuno Sacramento (Ílhavo) stand out in the representation of foreign galleries renewing their participation in Art Madrid. From Germany he returns to Schmalfuss (Berlin) and the French Galerie Norty (Carrières-sur-Seine). And the Taiwanese Yiri Arts (Taipei) and the Cuban Collage Habana (Havana) could not miss this 15th anniversary celebration.

In such a special edition, Art Madrid has decided to redefine and expand the curatorial program One Project to transform it into a place of friction and artistic stimulus. Under the title "Salvajes. La cage aux fauves" and under the curatorship of Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta, One Project will consist of the work of 9 artists who work on contemporary creation from different perspectives, presenting new and specific projects for the fair. One Project will be formed by ATC Gallery from Santa Cruz de Tenerife representing Nicolás Laiz and Alona Harpaz; Kaplan Projects from Palma, with the artists Juan Carlos Batista and Santiago Palenzuela; MA Arte Contemporáneo also from Palma, with the work of Andrés Planas, and Plastic Murs from Valencia, with the work of Pichiavo and Julio Anaya and DDR Art Gallery from Madrid, on this occasion with the new sculpture by Roberto López and the painting by Virginia Rivas.

Juan Carlos Batista

Psicopaisaje II, 2015

Impresión digital en papel de algodón

60 x 77cm

PichiAvo

Bristol Poseidon, 2019

Mixed media on canvas

120 x 160cm

As the curator explains, the programme activates "research on the market and fairs as institutions that legitimise professional careers in the art world, but also on fashions, trends and mainstreams, focusing on those resilient artists who choose to travel along paths far removed from them". A space for the most risky and latest artistic proposals.

Another of the great novelties of this edition is the specific programme dedicated to video art and action art. Together with the video art platform PROYECTOR and with the curatorship of Mario Gutiérrez Cru, at the beginning of each day of the fair the public will be able to enjoy the best selection of video art pieces from the most outstanding international festivals around the world to continue with a direct immersion in art through the presentations and meetings with an artist every afternoon at 5pm. Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Fernando Baena, Mario Santamaría and Maia Navas will be the protagonists of this space.

And the best is always at the end, offering the audience a unique and unforgettable experience: attending live audiovisual performances by internationally renowned artists. Iván Puñal, Eunice Artur with Bruno Gonçalves, Arturo Moya with Ruth Abellán and Olga Diego will look for an intimate and personal connection with the audience at 8pm inside the Crystal Gallery of the Palacio de Cibeles.

In addition, visitors to Art Madrid'20 will be able to see the work of artists Juan Díaz-Faes and Buba Viedma at the stand set up by Yorokobu, which will bring a wide historical selection of the magazine's covers on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

They will also be able to take a break and enjoy a cocktail thanks to Royal Bliss and its wide range of mixers where there will also be live actions with the participation of five artists who will perform their own version of the painting "The Red Dog" by Gauguin.

And in such a special celebration, the collaboration of Liquitex could not be missed, which will award a prize in materials valued at 1,500 euros to one of the participating artists of Art Madrid who uses acrylic painting as the main medium in their creations. The winner will be decided between the organisation of Liquitex and Art Madrid and on Sunday 1st March there will be a ceremony at the fair to award the prize.

Ultimately, Art Madrid'20 is celebrating its fifteenth year of existence with its most dynamic and moving edition. This is an excellent opportunity to get into the current creation scene, with a wide and varied proposal that highlights its permanent commitment to young creators and the most current forms of creation.

The work of Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) is situated within a genealogy of contemporary art that interrogates the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent, placing artistic practice on a threshold where nature, time, and perception converge. His research begins with an apparently minor geomorphological phenomenon—the traces left in the sand by the action of the tides—and transforms it into a poetic device for sensitive observation of the landscape. The temporal restriction imposed by low tide functions not only as a technical constraint but also as a conceptual structure that organizes the creative process and aligns it with an ethic of radical attention and presence.

Far from approaching the landscape as a mere backdrop or stage, Castaño recognizes in the maritime environment a generative system that precedes all human intervention. The sea, wind, and light produce autonomous records that he translates pictorially, shifting authorship toward a practice of listening and mediation.

The territory—initially asturian and progressively extended to other geographical contexts—functions as a material archive and situated memory. Each work becomes an unrepeatable index of a specific place and moment, revealing the fragility of natural cycles without resorting to explicit rhetoric of denunciation. In this way, Iyán Castaño’s painting operates as an active pause, a gesture of suspension that allows us to experience the world’s constant transformation from a sensitive and reflective proximity.

Open waters. 14-04-24. Expanded graphic on canvas. 2024. Detail.

In your practice, you work under the time constraint imposed by low tide. How does this temporal limit shape your creative process?

Low tide profoundly conditions my working method, but it does not function merely as a time limit; rather, it is the axis around which the entire project is structured. There is a prior phase in which I study meteorological conditions and the possible climatic variations of a specific day; based on this, I know whether I will be able to work and with which materials.

Once on the beach, during low tide, I have a very limited window—sometimes barely two hours or even less—in which I must move through the space searching for existing traces. If I find one, I intervene in it; if not, I must move on to another beach. After the intervention, I have to remove it quickly before the sea returns and erases every trace. In a way, these works transform the ripples of sand—those forms that are essentially ephemeral—into something permanent.

Where the sea is born. 15-09-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. Rodiles Beach, Asturias. 2025.

How does the meteorological and maritime environment—the unpredictability of the sea, wind, light, and tide—become a co-author of your pieces?

I do not consider the environment a co-author in the traditional sense, but rather the true author of the traces I work with. I am interested in understanding nature as a great creator: through tides, waves, wind, and light, the sand generates forms that are in constant regeneration. In order to create my works, the sea must first have created its own.

From there, using acrylics, oils, waxes, or sprays, I attempt to translate into the work my sensations and emotions in front of the sea at that specific moment. Whether it is winter or summer, cloudy or sunny, a small cove or an expansive beach, all of these context conditions result and become imprinted in the work.

Sand Ripples. 07-04-21. Expanded graphic on canvas. 189 x 140 cm. Niembro Estuary. Asturias. 2021.

Your work is closely tied to the Asturian territory—beaches, coastal forests, the cove of La Cóndia. What role do place, topography, local identity, and geographic memory play in your practice?

Place is everything in my project. Asturias was the point of departure and the territory where my gaze was formed. I have been working along this line for seven years, and over time I have come to understand that each trace is inseparable from the specific site and the exact day on which it is produced.

From there, I felt the need to expand the map and begin working in other territories. So far, I have developed works in Senegal, Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands, Indonesia, and elsewhere—and in each case, the result is completely different. The sea that bathes those coasts, the arrangement of the rocks, the morphology of the beach, or even the animals that inhabit it generate unique traces, impossible to reproduce elsewhere. This specificity of territory—its topography and geographic memory—is inscribed in each work in a singular, inseparable, and unrepeatable way.

Mangata. 05-11-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 190 x 130 cm. Sorraos Beach. Llanes. 2025.

To what extent are climate change, rising sea levels, altered tidal cycles, or coastal erosion present—or potentially present—as an underlying reflection in your work?

My work does not originate from an ecological intention or a direct form of protest. If there is a reflection on the environment, it emerges indirectly, by bringing people closer to the landscape, inviting them to observe attentively and to develop a more empathetic relationship with the environment they inhabit. Beaches are in constant transformation, but I do not seek to fix the landscape; rather, I attempt to convey the experience of being in front of it. In this sense, each work is like a small sea that one can take home.

Tree of Life. 19-02-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 50 x 70 cm. El Puntal Beach. Asturias. 2025.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

In my work there is very little planning in terms of the final result, but there is a very precise preliminary planning. Before going to the beach, I monitor the time of low tide, wave height, wind, and weather conditions; based on this, I decide which beach to go to. Even so, when I arrive, I still do not know what work I am going to make. It is there that I determine which material to use, which color to apply, and where the intervention will take place. Many times, the environment simply does not allow work on that day, and chance becomes an essential element of these works. Error, in turn, becomes a new possibility if one learns how to work with it.