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 practice of the collective DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) is situated at a fertile intersection between contemporary art, ecological thinking, and a philosophy of experience that shifts the emphasis from production to attention. Faced with the visual and material acceleration of the present, their work does not propose a head-on opposition, but rather a sensitive reconciliation with time, understood as lived duration rather than as a measure. The work thus emerges as an exercise in slowing down, a pedagogy of perception where contemplating and listening become modes of knowledge.

In the work of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), the territory does not function as a framework but rather as an agent. The landscape actively participates in the process, establishing a dialogical relationship reminiscent of certain eco-critical currents, in which subjectivity is decentralized and recognized as part of a broader framework. This openness implies an ethic of exposure, which is defined as the act of exposing oneself to the climate, the elements, and the unpredictable, and this means accepting vulnerability as an epistemological condition.

The materials—fabrics, pigments, and footprints—serve as surfaces for temporary inscriptions and memories, bearing the marks of time. The initial planning is conceived as an open hypothesis, allowing chance and error to act as productive forces. In this way, the artistic practice of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) articulates a poetics of care and being-with, where creating is, above all, a profound way of feeling and understanding nature.

In a historical moment marked by speed and the overproduction of images, your work seems to champion slowness and listening as forms of resistance. Could it be said that your practice proposes a way of relearning time through aesthetic experience?

Diana: Yes, but more than resistance or vindication, I would speak of reconciliation—of love. It may appear slow, but it is deliberation; it is reflection. Filling time with contemplation or listening is a way of feeling. Aesthetic experience leads us along a path of reflection on what lies outside us and what lies within.

The territory does not appear in your work as a backdrop or a setting, but as an interlocutor. How do you negotiate that conversation between the artist’s will and the voice of the place, when the landscape itself participates in the creative process?

Álvaro: For us, the landscape is like a life partner or a close friend, and naturally this intimate relationship extends into our practice. We go to visit it, to be with it, to co-create together. We engage in a dialogue that goes beyond aesthetics—conversations filled with action, contemplation, understanding, and respect.

Ultimately, in a way, the landscape expresses itself through the material. We respect all the questions it poses, while at the same time valuing what unsettles us, what shapes us, and what stimulates us within this relationship.

The Conquest of the Rabbits I & II. 2021. Process.

In your approach, one senses an ethic of exposure: exposing oneself to the environment, to the weather, to others, to the unpredictable. To what extent is this vulnerability also a form of knowledge?

Diana: For us, this vulnerability teaches us a great deal—above all, humility. When we are out there and feel the cold, the rain, or the sun, we become aware of how small and insignificant we are in comparison to the grandeur and power of nature.

So yes, we understand vulnerability as a profound source of knowledge—one that helps us, among many other things, to let go of our ego and to understand that we are only a small part of a far more complex web.

Sometimes mountains cry too. 2021. Limestone rockfall, sun, rain, wind, pine resin on acrylic on natural cotton canvas, exposed on a blanket of esparto grass and limestone for two months.. 195 cm x 130 cm x 3 cm.

Your works often emerge from prolonged processes of exposure to the environment. Could it be said that the material—the fabrics, the pigments, the traces of the environment—acts as a memory that time writes on you as much as you write on it?

Álvaro: This is a topic for a long conversation, sitting on a rock—it would be very stimulating. But if experiences shape people’s inner lives and define who we are in the present moment, then I would say yes, especially in that sense.

Leaving our comfort zone has led us to learn from the perseverance of plants and the geological calm of mountains. Through this process, we have reconciled ourselves with time, with the environment, with nature, with ourselves, and even with our own practice. Just as fabrics hold the memory of a place, we have relearned how to pay attention and how to understand. Ultimately, it is a way of deepening our capacity to feel.

The fox and his tricks. 2022. Detail.

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

Diana: Our planning is limited to an initial hypothesis. We choose the materials, colours, places, and sometimes even the specific location, but we leave as much room as possible for the unexpected to occur. In the end, that is what it is really about: allowing nature to speak and life to unfold. For us, both the unexpected and mistakes are part of the world’s complexity, and within that complexity we find a form of natural beauty.