Espiral, Rodrigo Juarranz, Luisa Pita, Arancha Osoro and Marita Segovia Galleries

One of the greatest aspirations of contemporary art is the ability to reinterpret and transform the (subjective) reality in which we live, aspiring to build other realities from renewed points of view since, without a doubt, the current insane state of the world requires other ways of seeing it.

Diego Benéitez

El pasado que construyó el futuro, 2018

Mixed media on board

150 x 150cm

Eduardo Vega de Seoane

Castillos en el aire, 2017

Acrylic and oil on canvas

146 x 114cm

Far from the abstract, fragmented and intentionally objective representation, very typical of cartographies, many artists propose new possibilities and alternative ways of being in the world based on concepts such as territory, map, landscape or border, employing strategies ranging from the purest and introspective fiction, displacement and deformation, even critical thinking to appropriation and simulation, among the most used. In this spectrum, we can find some of the issues developed by the artist invited to partake in Art Madrid '19, Rubén Martín de Lucas, but can also be found in the work of certain creators that we will present in our fourteenth edition.

Nacho Angulo, "Dios no existe todavía", mix media on wood, 2018. Espiral Gallery.

The work of Nacho Angulo, represented by Galería Espiral (Noja, Cantabria), reflects precisely a deep and very personal interest in geography, construction and the soulfulness of living matter. In his "constructed paintings", as they were baptized by the art critic and professor Francisco Calvo Serraller, in those beautiful pieces in wood, not only the references to territory and the obsession with the artist's framework are made explicit, as we see in the pieces such as “Hummus” (2015) or “Esquizos” (2018), but they also expand condensed, isolated and enclosed poetics, as seen in “Individuum innefabileest” (2016), “Aflora” (2018) or the revealing “Dios no existe todavía” (2018).

Manolo Oyonarte, "Espejo Cósmico", mix media on canvas, 2018. Galería Espiral.

Also, defined territories that become undefined, challenged and destabilized all of which is presented from the singular perspective of each artist of the Espiral: the horizon layers, vitalistic, contrasted and dreamy, accumulate in Víctor Alba’s work. Paintings like “Castillos en el aire” (2017) by Eduardo Vega Seoane are authentic pictographs of contemporaneity, forms in continuous movements that reflect so well the freedom from which the painter creates. We can also find other territories that are both sinister and fascinating such as the scenes by Manolo Oyonarte, where the individual enigma of the subconscious is stained with violent colours and disturbing figures; just as the internal worlds of Jerónimo Maya which are made present in his mysterious paintings both ethereal and carnal.

Alberto Sánchez

Il n'y a pas, 2018

Mixed media

89 x 107cm

Marcos Tamargo

Catábasis, 2017

Mixed media on board

180 x 180cm

Located in the classic sabotage among the dialects of photography and painting, a wound always opened by the great Darío Villalba, we can find the work of the Australian-Hispanic Alberto Sánchez who, despite sharing a name with the great sculptor from Vallecas, presents a work that rather reminds of the lucid and tremendous games created by Juan Ugalde. However, Sánchez's work is located in the centre of great contemporary cities, becoming a set of large landscapes in which the Expressionist worlds imagined by the artist are revealed. Sánchez is the new addition to the fair from the Gallery Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero, Burgos), alongside the lyrical and evocative Diego Benéitez and the textural Marcos Tamargo, very interested in mineral texture, also nostalgic of the rest, the natural or artificial memory; all of this revealed in his vital journey.

María Ortega Estepa

La búsqueda III, 2018

Collage

55 x 49cm

Mª José Gallardo

El rico, 2017

Oil, enamel and gold leaf on canvas

100 x 81cm

If we are talking about nature and landscape we have to summon the Luisa Pita Gallery (Santiago de Compostela) and start with María Ortega Estepa. Ortega, an artist very sensitive to social potential of art, is the author of exuberant naturalist paintings, small invented places in which, as we have seen in her last works, some of her elements crave getting out of the two dimensions imposed by painting, making a physical appearance in the form of real branches and mosses: devoted vegetation of the earth. Another enthusiast of the natural territory that has come to populate with a fleet of 2,600 plants planted in the humid Venezuelan rainforest is Darío Basso, from whom we will see a selection of his “Emanaciones”: abstractions, that with still wild echoes, connect with the phenomenology, because the artist feeds them to the natural landscape so that they are directly exposed to the sun, the rain, the wind, the temperature changes, exposed in summary, to all the possible physical phenomena. Luisa Pita closes her proposal for Art Madrid with the symbolist and enigmatic María José Gallardo, an artist who exhibits some of her latest paintings for the fair. We are facing a special Cabinets of curiosities, with its characteristic lapidary messages and its vital lessons, as in the little flattering “El que más da menos pide” (2018) or the vanitas “El rico” (2017), usually under the influence of Baroque tradition finished with very thin flakes of gold leaf, that which above all are paintings made with that strong passion, so meticulous, careful and full of the personal curiosity of Gallardo for the interesting things of this world.

Rafael Navarro, "Falsa Libertad", photography, 2015. Galería Arancha Osoro.

Very different is the proposal of the Arancha Osoro Gallery (Oviedo), which presents a selection of six creators: Rafael Navarro, José Paredes, Kiko Miyares, Luis Parades, Elena Rato and Iván Baizán. Navarro presents some of his most beautiful and seductive diptychs, classics such as “Diptych nº9” (2002) or “Diptych nº49” (2002) as well as more recent realizations, regarding our surroundings, the architecture and our way of relating to it, as in “Cartografía” (2015) or “Falsa libertad” (2015), works in which he maintains his unmistakable dialectic that, as the creator Joan Fontcuberta pointed out, “not only invite us to reflect on visual expression, but also to share heartfelt inner experiences”.

Elena Rato, "Los límites del gesto II", acrylic on canvas and vynil on the wall, 2018. Galería Arancha Osoro.

We may continue with the work of Baizán, also very concerned about the structural forms: serigraphies of possible or impossible buildings which acquire volume, levels and dissections through the encapsulation in methacrylate and polystyrene. We also highlight the series in sculptured glass “Cities and citizens” (2014) by Luis Parades, constructions only in appearance less sophisticated than those of Baizán but tremendously magical, sensory and textural from their minimalist forms. Magical can also be the surrealist universes of Paredes, an artist who presents his latest series, “Escenografias de lo inestable” (2018): optical games in dreamlike spaces starring the contemporary man and his particular ghosts. On the other hand, the new territories by Rato are shaped by superpositioning surfaces, in that kind of palimpsests that now also combines with a kind of invasive vinyl and that presents as exercises or "metaphorical whims", based on the suggestive game of gestural interruptions.

Joao Carlos Galvao, "Sin Título", embossed and lacquered wood, 2018. Galería Marita Segovia.

We finish with the interesting selection that the Marita Segovia Gallery (Madrid) will exhibit. In its booth, you can appreciate the painstaking work by Pilar Pequeño, photographer staring in one of the online exhibitions of the Art Madrid Market. From the intimate flowers -which remind so much of some of the works of the Spanish realist painters, as those by the brilliant Isabel Quintanilla-, to the decadent architectural spaces, Pequeño’s work always emerges from silence and the melancholic contemplation, creating amazing and seductive images that evoke a mysterious omen. Hunches also come from the shapes of the work by David Rodríguez Caballero -artist also presents in the Aurora Vigil-Escalera's booth-: a fragile and special creation, strange and fleeting; something that contrasts completely with the bold relief sculptures by João Carlos Galvão. It is obvious that the experience in wood is fundamental for the Brazilian artist, who continues to transmit his personal and poetic message, direct and truthful, demonstrating his absolute passion for the transcendent properties of wood. However, the artist Edgar Plans -whom we can also see in the Miquel Alzueta Gallery’s booth- works on the pictorial qualities in his last works, as we see in “Art Wall” (2018) or “Colors” (2018), extending his personal iconography from his characteristic ludic and colourful drawing.

These are the unique territories devised by some of the artists of Art Madrid '19. Artistic worlds that, if capable of thrilling, can motivate us to change our understanding of "the real" and the ways in which we relate to one another.

The work of Julian Manzelli (Chu) (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974) is situated within a field of research in which art adopts methodologies close to scientific thinking without renouncing its poetic and speculative dimension. His practice is structured as an open process of experimentation, in which the studio functions as a laboratory: a space for trial, error, and verification, oriented less toward the attainment of certainties than toward the production of new forms of perception. In this sense, his work enters into dialogue with an epistemology of uncertainty, akin to philosophical traditions that understand knowledge as a process of becoming rather than closure.

Manzelli explores interstitial zones, understood as spaces of transit and transformation. These ambiguous areas are not presented as undefined but as potential—sites where categories dissolve, allowing the emergence of hybrid, almost alchemical configurations that reprogram the gaze. Geometry, far from operating as a normative system, appears tense and destabilized. His precarious constructions articulate a crossing between intuition and reason, play and engineering, evoking a universal grammar present in both nature and symbolic thought. Thus, Manzelli’s works do not represent the world but rather transfigure it, activating questions rather than offering closed answers.

Avícola. Escultura magnética. Madera, imanes, laca automotriz y acero. 45 x 25 cm. 2022.

Science and its methods inspire your process. What kinds of parallels do you find between scientific thinking and artistic creation?

Science and art are two disciplines that I believe share a great deal and are undoubtedly deeply interconnected. I am interested in that point of intersection, and although they are often placed in opposition, I think they share a common origin. Both involve a continuous search, a need for answers that stems from curiosity rather than certainty, and that often—or in many cases—leads both artists and scientists into uncomfortable, uncertain positions, pushing them out of their comfort zones. I believe this is a fundamental and very compelling aspect shared by these two disciplines, which in some way define us as human beings.

In this sense, both share experimentation as a core axis of their practice. Trial and error, testing, and the entire process of experimentation are what generate development. In my case, this applies directly to the studio: I experience it as a laboratory where different projects are developed and materials are tested. It is as if one formulates a hypothesis and then puts it to the test—materials, procedures, forms, colors—and outcomes emerge. These results are not meant to be verified, but rather, in art, I believe their function is to generate new modes of perception, new ways of seeing, and new experiences.

Receptor Lunar #01. Ensamble de Madera Reciclada torneada. 102 x 26 x 26 cm. De la serie Fuerza orgánica. 2023.

You work within the interstices between the natural and the artificial, the figurative and the abstract. What interests you about these ambiguous zones, and what kinds of knowledge emerge from them?

I have always been quite restless, and that has led me to immerse myself in different fields and disciplines. I believe there is a special richness in interstitial spaces—in movement back and forth, in circulation between media. These spaces have always drawn my attention: ambiguous places, hybrid zones. There is something of an amphibious logic here—amphibians as entities that carry and transmit information, that share, that cross boundaries and membranes. In my case, this is closely linked to what I understand as freedom, especially at a time marked by categorization, labeling, and a profound distortion of the very concept of freedom.

On another level, more metaphysical in nature, it is within the mixture—within that blending—that the living energy of creating something new appears, which is undoubtedly a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. It is as if “one thing becomes something else outside the mold.” This interaction is necessary to break structures, to build new ones, to transmute—to undergo something almost alchemical. I believe fixation is the enemy. In a way, ambiguity is what allows us to reprogram our gaze and generate new points of view.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

Movement, repetition, and sequence appear as visual strategies in your work. What role does seriality play in the generation of meaning?

Movement, repetition, and sequence are very present in my work. I have a long background in animation, and in some way that interest begins to filter into the other disciplines in which I work. Thus, movement also appears in my visual art practice.

Seriality is a way of thinking about time and of introducing a certain narrative and sense of action into the work, while at the same time conditioning the viewer’s experience. It invites the viewer to try to decipher repetition as a kind of progression. I am particularly interested in more abstract forms of narrative. In this type of narrative, where there is no clear figuration, repetition begins to establish a pulse, a “beat” that marks the passage of time. What is interesting, I think, is the realization that repetition is not exactly duplication, and that what seems identical begins to mutate over time, through rhythm, or through its own unfolding history.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

You work with geometric and constructive systems. What role does geometry play as a symbolic language within your practice?

Geometry is present in my work in multiple forms and dimensions, generating different dynamics. Generally, I tend to put it into crisis, into tension. When one engages closely with my works, it becomes clear that constructions based on imprecise and unstable balance predominate. I am not interested in symmetry or exactness, but rather in a dynamic construction that proposes a situation. I do not conceive of geometry as a rigid system.

I believe this is where a bridge is established between the intuitive and the rational, between playfulness and engineering—those unexpected crossings. At the same time, geometry functions as a code, a language that connects us to a universal grammar present in nature, in fractals, and that undoubtedly refers to symbolism. It is there that an interesting portal opens, where the work begins to re-signify itself and becomes a process of meaning-making external to itself, entirely uncertain. The results of my works are not pieces that represent; rather, I believe they are pieces that transfigure and, in doing so, generate questions.

WIP. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de contrucción. 2022.

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

In terms of planning, it depends greatly on the project and even on the day. Some projects, due to their scale or complexity, require careful planning, especially when they involve the participation of other people. In many cases, planning is undoubtedly essential.

That said, in the projects I do plan, I am always interested in leaving space for improvisation, where chance or the unfolding of the process itself can come into play. I believe this is where interesting things begin to emerge, and it is important not to let them pass by. Personally, I would find it very boring to work on pieces whose outcome I already know in advance. For me, the realization of each work is an uncertain journey; I do not know where it will lead, and I believe that is where its potential lies—not only for me, but also for the work itself and for the viewer’s experience.