Art Madrid’20 turns this edition into a celebration of the latest and more dynamic contemporary art. On the occasion of the 15th anniversary, we have prepared an intense program of activities program of activities since February 12th and that extends during the five days of the fair. In collaboration with the video art platform PROYECTOR and under the curatorship of its director Mario Gutiérrez Cru, the program also has the MediaLab Prado and Sala Alcalá 31 spaces.

As a newness and on the occasion of this very festive edition, Art Madrid will have this year its own stand dedicated exclusively to video-creation, action art and performance. An immersive experience in the most complete artistic paradigm.

The program of activities will begin next February 12th in Medialab Prado with the masterclass (from 17:30 to 20:30) of Patxi Araújo under the title of All Prophets are Wrong. The artist will share his creative experience, the paths explored in communication and his production process incorporating technology without losing the burden of speech.Then as an opening the interactive work of Patxi, Sherezade will be projected on the facade of MediaLab Prado. This work proposes a game with the public through the random generation of sentences and phrases according to the position of the spectator in the front square of the facade.

During the next two days, the master classes of Olga Diego will be held in this space with El vuelo como materia viva and Lois Patiño with Tiempo e imagen. Olga Diego stages a practical, unique and exclusive meeting for the public: work on the construction of the concepts of Flight, Art and Action through the installation that will be part of his performance at the fair. An intimate experience between the artist, creation and the audience.

To close this cycle of masterclasses Lois Patiño proposes an approach to video art and feature film through his work and the treatment that is made of these universals, reflecting on time, image and contemplative experience.

Olga Diego, "The bubble woman show". Photo: Carolina Diego

For its part, the auditorium of Sala Alcalá 31, will host on Thursday 20th the meeting with professionals De la imagen fija al New Media . They will discuss the evolution of the image in contemporary culture and the impact it currently has for the creators and the society that enjoys and consumes it. The experts will make a tour of the still image, the video art or moving image and its multiple visions until reaching the new media. Rafael Doctor, historian, independent curator and cultural manager, critic and curator Karin Ohlenschläger, today director of activities of Laboral Centro de Arte y Industrial Creación, and Berta Sichel, cultural agent and curator who today directs Bureauphi Art Agency, all moderated by Miguel Álvarez-Fernández.

Finally, in this cycle of previous activities, Art Madrid organizes on Saturday, February 22nd, a visit to the artist Eduardo Balanza's workshop, in which we will have the opportunity to know his creative space and approach one of his last pieces “B71”, which combines sound and technology with an impressive result. B71 organ is an instrument that works activated by vibrating speakers on plates capable of connecting to meteorological data websites, works in manual and automatic mode, generating its own sounds. The visit will also end with performance in petit committee.

Eduardo Balanza, "B71"

Art Madrid wants to accommodate less visible artistic disciplines that, however, house some of the most groundbreaking and contemporary languages. An own stand inside the fair, from February 26th to March 1st, will be dedicated to moving image and contact with more ephemeral manifestations such as installation or performance.

Every day at the fair, we will enter the video art thanks to the screenings of a selection of award-winning pieces and finalists from the main international festivals dedicated to the moving images. Mario Gutiérrez Cru presents an international tour of Argentina, Colombia, France, Greece, Mexico, the Netherlands, Morocco, Peru and Portugal.

Among its goals, this programming is to promote dialogue and understanding of the new working methods that the authors follow in the field of video creation and the action art. For this, every afternoon at 5:00 p.m. we will attend the presentation and meeting with an outstanding artist from the field of video creation: Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Fernando Baena, Mario Santamaría y Maia Navas will star in this space where he will introduce his work and then proceed to the visualization of a selection of his most recent work on the screen.

To end this art festival, we will have an exclusive experience every evening at 8:00 p.m: live audiovisual performances by artists with great international recognition. Iván Puñal, Olga de Diego, Eunice Artur con Bruno Gonçalves y Arturo Moya con Ruth Abellán.

Action art is a varied group of techniques or artistic styles that emphasize the creative act of the artist, the action. The term was created by Allan Kaprow, who pointed out the interrelationship between the artist and the viewer at the moment of the artistic creation.

It can be said that the concept of action art was born in the 1920s with Dadaism and Surrealism, in artistic montages such as collage and assemblage. Among the various forms of expression of action art are happening, performance, environment and installation.

In its most festive edition, this year Art Madrid presents its most innovative commitment with a specific programme dedicated to new media and action art. In this 15th edition we will have a booth at the fair for the realization of presentations and live actions in collaboration with the video art platform PROYECTOR and under the curatorship of its director Mario Gutiérrez Cru.

If you come to Art Madrid, you will be able to enjoy the different parts of the programme throughout the day. From the morning onwards, you will be able to view the best selection of pieces from the most outstanding international video art festivals in the world, with proposals from Portugal, Mexico, Morocco, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, France, Greece and the Netherlands. A selection made by Mario Gutiérrez Cru that will present us with new languages of artistic expression in the field of video creation so that we can compose a general idea of the international artistic paradigm of this area.

Then, every afternoon at 5pm we will attend the presentation and meeting with an outstanding artist to end the day of the fair with a performance at 8pm from Wednesday to Saturday. This program seeks to be an immersive experience in contemporary art and explore new languages linked to technology.

Opening the program on Wednesday 26th we will have Abelardo Gil-Fournier, in the presentation we will be able to contemplate the installation of the work "The Quivering of the Reed" and comment it with its creator in the whole of its trajectory. His work revolves around the hybridization between the real and the sensitive, approached from a perspective in which perception, image and material production are fused in a practice based on research into territorial planning and plant growth. His projects are conceived as material operations proposed for an open space between art, nature and politics.

Art Madrid will host at 8pm the performance of Iván Puñal “RRAND 0-82.” The artist Iván Puñal (a.k.a. The Pleasant View) will explore through a live audiovisual performance the concept of "random" and "chaos". Iván Puñal, works with determinism and freedom in his performances questioning how much belongs to the conscious self and how much is a mirage of illusion. To this end, uncontrolled elements will be introduced into the performance using mathematical algorithms, both to generate visual pictures and improvised sound spaces so that the result is "non-repeatable", "uncontrolled" and "non-voluntary". Atonal music within the territory of "musique concretè" or "noise" will accompany the projections, also framing the concept of "all sound is music".

On Thursday 27th, the public will be enjoy an encounter with Fernando Baena, a multidisciplinary artist who cultivates video, photography, installation and performance as means to reach the spectator with greater strength. His works seek to interact by approaching them through the use of common materials, and the use of direct discourses that demonstrate his communicative intention.

Afterwards, a site-specific participatory action will be carried out for the 'Partidura'. A project by Eunice Artur with the collaboration of Bruno Gonçalves. This project is part of the fascinating and vast panorama of the creation of graphic annotations. The evolution of electronic music requires a new system of notations where, among others, we seek to understand the relationship of new phenomena, such as the relationship between sound and plastic manipulation in performance; unpredictability and error as ways of generating non-linear readings and/or new graphic forms of notation.

On Friday 28th, Mario Santamaría will investigate the phenomenon of the contemporary observer, paying attention to two processes that shape him: the representational practices and the apparatuses of vision and mediation. Mario explores areas such as conflict, memory, virtuality and surveillance through tactics such as appropriation, remake and montage.

Two performers each sing inside the other's mouth. This is how the performance that Arturo Moya and Ruth Abellán will give on Friday 28th begins. The sound resulting from the interaction of the two voices in a single cavity, controls live the water produced by the same performers in a video that is projected during the performance. The same sound also governs the appearance of sounds from water recordings. "Danaides' Barrel", a physical and sound exploration that will leave no one indifferent.

And to finish the program of this edition Art Madrid-PROYECTOR, on Saturday 28th we will have two unmissable activities: on the one hand the meeting with the Argentine artist and curator Maia Navas, Bachelor of Arts and Technology, Bachelor of Psychology and Specialist in Creativity and Innovation, who will explore in a direct conversation with the public all these areas, giving way later to the performance of Olga Diego "The bubble woman show". The girl of plastics. The bubble woman. Outside, the audience interprets the movements of those two pairs of legs under the translucent inflatable. Sharing the air, the emptiness, the fragility…

Art Madrid'20 becomes a space for artistic immersion, involving all those who come and let art flood their lives from February 26 to March 1 in the Crystal Gallery of the Palacio de Cibeles.

We are waiting for you!