After an intense year of work, visits to galleries, meetings with artists, transatlantic trips to learn about other possible ways of thinking about a fair, we can see that the future of Art Madrid continues to be linked to the initiatives and desires of those who are trying to build a sustainable value proposal for the reality of the cultural context and specifically for contemporary art in Spain.

We return once again to the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles to welcome gallerists, artists, audiences, curators, critics, collectors and all the people who make Art Madrid a place to encounter each edition. This ephemeral home that our fair becomes for a week will celebrate its nineteenth anniversary in 2024. On the eve of our twentieth, a reminder is needed to catapult us towards the celebration.

Work by Katya Scheglova. Dr Robot Gallery. Image courtesy of Christian Monsalve of Too Many Flash.

After the first fifteen editions of Art Madrid, we began a curious obsession with numbers and the month of February. Since then, each time we begin the organizational season for the next edition, dates, days, and hours are turned into tiny goals to be achieved, in an attempt to ensure that the fair continues to be a source of vitality; that it does not lose its approachable and accessible essence; that the galleries risk more on their exhibition proposals; that the artists continue to feel part of this call that we are, and understand that without them, nothing would make sense. In other words, we allow ourselves to dream of a better contemporary art fair in the midst of a scenario that is sometimes difficult, but for us definitely hopeful. For the first time since the pandemic, Art Madrid, an event conceived for Art Week in February, is moving its calendar to March. This closes an infinite cycle of plans for the second month of the year and opens up new opportunities for March to orbit in our favor.

Art Madrid. Edition 16. Image courtesy of Christian Monsalve. Too Many Flash.

The preamble to the 19th edition was also a time to reflect on our obsession with editions, special editions, and special editions... And we understood that our Roman Empire of numbers and editions, that rare thing, is one we think about more than we should; it is not the fear of age, it is not because the years are weighing us down, or because we continue to be defined as a satellite fair. And here we open parentheses, (It is so beautiful the definition of a natural satellite: "A natural satellite is a celestial body that orbits around a planet. The satellite is usually smaller and accompanies the planet in its orbit around its mother star. Contrary to the fragments that orbit in a ring, the natural satellite is the only body in its orbit"). In fact, our Roman Empire is to ensure that the prestige that Art Madrid has achieved along the way is maintained in all the facets that an event of this magnitude touches: at the behest of the contemporary art market, in the eyes of our audience, and that we continue to be the first choice of galleries that bet on our project.

Work by Rodrigo Romero. 3 Punts Gallery. Image courtesy of Christian Monsalve. Too Many Flash.

Under the symbol of a satellite with a natural orbit, Art Madrid'24 opens with a General Program made up of thirty-six galleries and around two hundred artists representing the latest artistic trends on the national and international scene. And it presents a Parallel Program of activities that will take place in the pre-fair and during the week of the event. With the objective of encouraging new generations of artists and offering them a space for promotion in the contemporary art market circuit, the program is composed of Arte y Palabra. Conversations with Carlos del Amor; OPEN BOOTH featuring guest artist Marina Tellme; Intercessions X Tara for Women; Lecturas. Curated Walkthroughs; La Quedada. Art Madrid'24 Studio Visits and the Collecting Program: One Shot Collectors, which includes a consulting service for the acquisition of works by Ana Suárez Gisbert.

Art Madrid. Edition 18. View at Uxval Gochez Gallery. Image courtesy of Ricardo Perucha.

The program - a small celestial body - is a space dedicated to artists who transcend the established, who dream of new forms of expression, and who, through their art, contribute to the evolution and transformation of the artistic context. It is a living showcase for those who not only imagine, but also materialize their visions, turning the fair's stage into a fertile ground for change and creative innovation.

On this 19th anniversary of Art Madrid, we would like to remind ourselves that the future belongs to the dreamers. It is for those who have the ability to dream, to imagine and to create; for those who actively work to turn their aspirations into tangible reality, even against all obstacles. After an intense year of work, we continue to dream of a new Art Madrid for each special edition.

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.