There are places where art breathes differently, where every piece finds the space to whisper into the viewer's ear. Art Madrid has become, edition after edition, a highly anticipated event for contemporary art—an encounter where innovation intertwines with human connection. In 2025, we celebrate our 20th edition, adhering to the guiding principles that have always defined Art Madrid: an approach that remains close to the public and attuned to the realities of the art world, conscious of future challenges and the positive impact of events like this, which often bring fresh air and break the insularity that tends to permeate the sector.

Milija Cpajak Thorn. Bronze sculpture. 2021.

It is often thought that the success of an art fair is measured in square meters. In truth, its true value lies in the audience's motivation to return year after year and to recommend it to others. In our case, being a "small" fair is a statement of principles. Here, there is no rush, no crowds to stifle conversation.

At Art Madrid, galleries, artists, and collectors have time to meet, to unravel the stories behind the artworks. It is a place where the intimacy of dialogue takes precedence over the grandiosity of numbers. Over these twenty years, we have seen galleries grow that began this adventure with us, sharing and shaping their journeys in the same spirit of closeness and authenticity. At the same time, each edition is enriched by the incorporation of new projects and visions that inject fresh air and broaden our artistic horizons.

Veljko Vuckovic. Suspended State. Oil on canvas. 2024.

The year 2025 brings us a selection of artists who are shaping the future of art. Guided by the thirty-four galleries participating in this edition of Art Madrid, we will discover artists whose passion for visual expression redefines the boundaries between abstraction and figuration; bold proposals that explore texture, color, and the symbolism of “other” visual narratives; and new voices and perspectives that confront the challenges of creation in a globalized world. This wealth of perspectives invites visitors to witness a constant dialogue between contemporary creation and the tensions that permeate it.

A clear example of how contemporary artists are weaving threads between the past and the present, thereby reshaping our understanding of art as a dynamic practice in continuous dialogue with history. In this context, artists challenge the conventions of visual language and invite us to rethink the meanings, textures, and symbols that saturate our perceptions.

The fair has remained true to its identity as a close, human-centered event—modest in scale but significant in impact—allowing it to offer a unique and personalized experience to everyone involved. The questions we pose are clear: How is contemporary art understood in the 21st century? How can a fair be not just a marketplace, but also a space for debate, critique, and discovery? And, above all, what does it mean to celebrate twenty years of contemporary art in a world transforming at breathtaking speed?

Iyán Castaño. Corrientes circulares. Mixed Media. 2024.

In 2025, Art Madrid emerges as a call to action: an invitation to pause and reflect on the role that art plays in our lives and society. Rather than offering a quick response to market dynamics, the fair creates a moment of reflection, a space where artworks can engage in deeper, more meaningful dialogue with the viewer. This approach is not only necessary but becomes an act of resistance against the immediacy and superficiality that often characterize the consumption of art in the digital age.

In an era where the acceleration of the market and consumer-driven trends shape the creation and exhibition of art, Art Madrid remains faithful to a model that values thoughtful reflection, personal encounters, and profound dialogue. This critique of speed is particularly relevant in a historical moment where digital platforms, algorithms, and globalization are redefining our interactions with culture.

Joana Gancho. ST. Oil on table. 2024.

In this edition, we tackle the challenge of balancing the need for relevance in a globalized market with the preservation of authenticity and creativity. In this effort, we have successfully struck a balance where the quality of the artistic offering is prioritized over the mass scale of events. This principle is essential to understanding how the fair has, over two decades, evolved into an international showcase while remaining true to its local essence and its strong connection to Madrid’s artistic community.

The inclusion of disciplines such as painting, sculpture, photography, and video art reflects the plurality of approaches that define Art Madrid. This diversity of artistic expressions offers the public a broad and multifaceted perspective on today’s contemporary art landscape, demonstrating art’s power to transform perceptions of urban spaces, integrating technology into the creative process, and reshaping the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the context that embraces it.

Richard García. Me peleo con las bestias de mi propia fantasía. Mixed Media. 2024.

Art Madrid returns this year, celebrating twenty years of contemporary art and reaffirming its commitment to remain an open space for galleries and artists striving to stand out in an increasingly fragmented and image-saturated world. With this in mind, we aim to ensure that the galleries' exhibitions resonate with the public, enhancing the experience by proposing new ways of engaging with contemporary art and tackling complex issues such as climate change, identity, collective memory, and global politics. In 2025, the works on display at Art Madrid will undoubtedly reflect the most pressing concerns and questions of our time.

Daniel Barrio. Guest artist of the third edition of OPEN BOOTH. Courtesy of the artist.

DESPIECE. PROTOCOLO DE MUTACIÓN

As part of the Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program, we present the third edition of Open Booth, a space conceived as a platform for artistic creation and contemporary experimentation. The initiative focuses on artists who do not yet have representation within the gallery circuit, offering a high-visibility professional context in which new voices can develop their practice, explore forms of engagement with audiences, and consolidate their presence within the current art scene. On this occasion, the project features artist Daniel Barrio (Cuba, 1988), who presents the site-specific work Despiece. Protocolo de mutación.

Daniel Barrio’s practice focuses on painting as a space for experimentation, from which he explores the commodification of social life and the tyranny of media approval. He works with images drawn from the press and other media, intervening in them pictorially to disrupt their original meaning. Through this process, the artist opens up new readings and questions how meaning is produced, approaching painting as a space of realization, therapy, and catharsis.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación is built from urban remnants, industrial materials, and fragments of history, inviting us to reflect on which memories we inherit, which we consume, and which ones we are capable of creating. Floors, walls, and volumes come together to form a landscape under tension, where the sacred coexists with the everyday, and where cracks matter more than perfection.

The constant evolution of art calls for ongoing exchange between artists, institutions, and audiences. In its 21st edition, Art Madrid reaffirms its commitment to acting as a catalyst for this dialogue, expanding the traditional boundaries of the art fair context and opening up new possibilities of visibility for emerging practices.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación emerges from a critical and affective impulse to dismantle, examine, and reassemble what shapes us culturally and personally. The work is conceived as an inseparable whole: an inner landscape that operates as a device of suspicion, where floors, walls, and volumes configure an ecosystem of remnants. It proposes a reading of history not as a linear continuity, but as a system of forces in permanent friction, articulating space as an altered archive—a surface that presents itself as definitive while remaining in constant transformation.

The work takes shape as a landscape constructed from urban waste, where floors, walls, and objects form a unified body made of lime mortar, PVC from theatrical signage, industrial foam, and offering wax. At the core of the project is an L-shaped structure measuring 5 × 3 meters, which reinterprets the fresco technique on reclaimed industrial supports. The mortar is applied wet over continuous working days, without a pursuit of perfection, allowing the material to reveal its own character. Orbiting this structure are architectural fragments: foam blocks that simulate concrete, a 3D-printed and distorted Belvedere torso, and a wax sculptural element embedded with sandpaper used by anonymous workers and artists, preserving the labor of those other bodies.

A white wax sculptural element functions within the installation as a point of sensory concentration that challenges the gaze. Inside it converge the accumulated faith of offering candles and the industrial residues of the studio, recalling that purity and devotion coexist with the materiality of everyday life. The viewer’s experience thus moves beyond the visual: bending down, smelling, and approaching its vulnerability transforms perception into an intimate, embodied act. Embedded within its density are sanding blocks used by artists, artisans, and laborers, recovered from other contexts, where the sandpaper operates as a trace of the effort of other bodies, following a protocol of registration with no autobiographical intent.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación addresses us directly, asking: which memory do we value—the one we consume, or the one we construct with rigor? The audience leaves behind a purely contemplative position to become part of the system, as the effort of moving matter, documentary rigor, and immersive materiality form a body of resistance against a mediated reality. The project thus takes shape as an inner landscape, where floor, surface, and volume articulate an anatomy of residues. Adulteration operates as an analytical methodology applied to the layers of urban reality, intervening in history through theatrical and street advertising, architectural remnants, and administrative protocols, proposing that art can restore the capacity to build one’s own memory, even if inevitably fragmented.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

DANIEL BARRIO (1988, Cuba)

Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988) is a visual artist whose practice articulates space through painting, understanding the environment as an altered archive open to critical intervention. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Cienfuegos (2004–2008), specializing in painting, and later at the Madrid Film School (ECAM, 2012–2015), where he studied Art Direction. His methodology integrates visual thinking with scenographic narrative.

His trajectory includes solo exhibitions such as La levedad en lo cotidiano (Galería María Porto, Madrid, 2023), Interiores ajenos (PlusArtis, Madrid, 2022), and Tribud (Navel Art, Madrid, 2019), as well as significant group exhibitions including Space is the Landscape (Estudio Show, Madrid, 2024), Winterlinch (Espacio Valverde Gallery, Madrid, 2024), Hiberia (Galería María Porto, Lisbon, 2023), and the traveling exhibition of the La Rioja Young Art Exhibition (2022).

A member of the Resiliencia Collective, his work does not pursue the production of objects but rather the articulation of pictorial devices that generate protocols of resistance against the flow of disposable images. In a context saturated with immediate data, his practice produces traces and archives what must endure, questioning not the meaning of the work itself but the memory the viewer constructs through interaction—thus reclaiming sovereignty over the gaze and inhabiting ruins as a method for understanding the present.