Art Madrid will celebrate its 18th edition from February 22nd to 26th of 2023 at Palacio de Cibeles' Galería de Cristal, a privileged space in which every year the public can appreciate the most current Spanish and international contemporary art. To celebrate this new meeting, Art Madrid returns to the art week scene with the firm intention of maintaining its work as a reference event within the cultural sector committed to becoming a vehicle for approaching new audiences.

Around 35 national and international galleries, carefully selected by Art Madrid's advisory committee, will make up the General Program. The proposals, marked by experimentation and the plurality of aesthetic discourses, turned the Palacio de Cristal into a window open to all artistic disciplines: painting, sculpture, graphic work, photography, video, installation, performance, digital art... Most of these artworks have been made exclusively for the occasion by the more than 160 artists who will meet on this stage in 2023.

Art Madrid turns eighteen, and coming of age becomes a motivation to take a forceful step toward the future. A time in which the fair wants to continue assisting the call of contemporary art. To achieve this goal, the usual programs have translated into platforms that, from within the event, would give voice to emerging creations, open up to new codes of reception and consumption of works of art and propose closer communication strategies to build the image of the outstanding artists of the edition.

The Curated Program returns for the third time led by curator Natalia Alonso Arduengo. The initiative proposes a thematic journey through pieces that dialogue with problems related to the concept of identity and how the contemporary subject sees himself. But, without a doubt, the highlight will be the presentations of three young artists that Art Madrid has selected to support and add value to the artistic and commercial circuit that the fair has cultivated over the years. At the present time, in which the uses of technologies, use of gender, alienation and uncertainty are part of our daily lives, this initiative is proposed as an institutional support for the development of artists who are beginning their professional careers. The program will be formally articulated with a site-specific installation and two performances that will take place during the fair celebration.

The Interviews Program returns to Art Madrid in its second edition. This time it is structured as a section curated by curator and art critic Alfonso de la Torre. These interviews will revolve around a common theme in which the figure of the artist and their practices in the art market will be the subject. That is how the curator proposes a journey through the works of the chosen artists in which he discovers, in greater depth, the visual universe of the ten most outstanding creators of Art Madrid'23. Starting in January, we will enjoy two weekly written interviews on the web and on the rest of the fair's communication channels, where we will see the results in video formats.

One Shot collectors Program returns to the fair with the commitment to continue building bridges to bring the public closer to contemporary art and the promotion of collecting at a national and international level. This initiative aims at professionals in the sector and lovers of contemporary art who are considering to start collecting. Led by Ana Suárez Gisbert, art advisor and appraiser, Art Madrid offers a free advisory service on the acquisition of works of art for the interested public.

During these eighteen years, Art Madrid has distinguished itself for its constant and responsible work with various agents of the national cultural network, the honesty and transparency with its loyal galleries, and the support for new gallery models. Aware of the importance of an event of this nature, Art Madrid proposes a plural edition, adapted to the new artistic languages ​​and committed to society, all practices in which the creative spirit of its organization is recognized.

List of confirmed galleries for Art Madrid'23

Nationals: BAT Alberto Cornejo (Madrid), Flecha (Madrid), Arma Gallery (Madrid), DDR (Madrid), Marita Segovia (Madrid), Galería Hispánica (Madrid/CDMX), 3 Punts (Barcelona), Inéditad (Barcelona), N2 Galería (Barcelona), Out of Africa Gallery (Sitges/London), Uxval Gochez (Barcelona), Aurora Vigil-Escalera (Gijón), Arancha Osoro (Oviedo), Bea Villamarín (Gijón); Alba Cabrera (Valencia), Shiras Galería (Valencia), Dr. Robot (Valencia), Luisa Pita (Santiago de Compostela), Galería Metro (Santiago de Compostela), MoretArt (A Coruña), Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero, Burgos), Espiral (Noja, Cantabria), Kur Art Gallery (San Sebastián, Vasc Country), La Aurora (Murcia), MA Arte Contemporáneo (Mallorca) y Manuel Ojeda (Canary Islands).

Internationals: Galerie LJ (Paris), Galleria Stefano Forni (Bologna), Michael Schmalfuss (Berlin), Yiri Arts (Taiwan), Sâo Mamede (Lisbon), Trema arte contemporânea (Lisbon), ArtLounge (Lisbon), Nuno Sacramento (Ílhavo, Portugal) y Collage Habana (La Habana).

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.