Artists Nicolás Laiz Placeres and Alona Harpaz are on show for the first time in Art Madrid, within the Galería ATC from Tenerife, presenting a collection where the wild is created through a space configured by the incursion of the human being in it.

Harpaz merges, over flat coloured backgrounds, expressionists figures and self-portraits mixed with wildlife and flora made with vibrant colours. Therefore, in her paintings, we can see a mixture between the beautiful and the terrifying. On the other hand, Laiz Paredes sculptures, have Nature and Human Being as elements in a disappearance process, mixed with objects which configure the reason of that destruction itself, creating iconic, almost monochromatic, three-dimensional shapes.

Alona Harpaz

I'm not here for your dream, 2019

Acrilico, spray y colores industriales sobre lienzo

140 x 150cm

Nicolás Laiz

Política Natural III, 2018

Resina, fibra de vidrio, aridos y pintura doble componente

80 x 30cm

Alona Harpaz (Tel Aviv, Israel, 1971) represents in her self-portraits botanic and animal patterns, applying a very personal and imaginative colour scheme, using a strong and vibrant brushstroke over, in many cases, merely decorative surfaces. In her work, colours exist by themselves, freely, but also as abstract well-mimicked elements or recognizable symbols. According to her, “perfectly beautiful paintings can also be dreadful”, and political commitment could be added to beauty and dreadfulness, as the critic Elke Buhruna points out. A sample of this could be seen in her work “Frequency Watchers”, which is a self-portrait of the artist riding a motorcycle, alluding to the 90s feminist movement in the United States, as Riot Grrrl and the Bikini Kill band, who combined feminism and pink lipstick. Therefore, her personality includes the political activism of her father (a Labour Zionist) and the artistic taste of her mother (a dancer).

Alona Harpaz

Frequency Watchers, 2018

Acrilico, spray y colores industriales sobre lienzo

80 x 100cm

Nicolás Laiz Placeres (Lanzarote, 1975), in his three-dimensional pieces, creates a confluence using objects of nature and industrial or genuinely pollutant materials, making a dichotomy between them. From this seemingly simple fusion, the artist is able to send a deeply elaborated message, with a critic tone, to a society that has led to overproduction and extreme and dangerous consumerism and, at the same time, using miscellaneous objects from the Isle’s “topic” iconography: shells, rocks and prickly pears blends with plastic bottles, totems and cranial shapes, creating iconic figures with advertising motifs of the extreme natural disaster situation that the Earth is facing. Finally, in a display of constant irony, his sculptures function as magical shapes that heal our status quo.

In the cage, the Alona Harpaz paintings howl next to the totems and fetish which his space partner Nicolás Laiz Placeres has made, mainly from different identity elements of Canary Islands.

Nicolás Laiz

Política Natural I, 2018

Resina, fibra de vidrio, aridos y pintura doble componente

80 x 30cm

Galería ATC located in the heart of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, participates for the first time in Art Madrid with an unreleased project, dedicated to these two artists which is forming part of the One Project program, coordinated by the art critic and independent curator Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta, under the theme “Salvajes: la cage aux fauves”.

Galería ATC was founded in 2017 by Elle Przybyla (USA) and Juan Matos Capote (Spain) as a part of the Agencia de Tránsitos Culturales - est. in 2014 -, a platform for multidisciplinar artistic investigation and the promotion of contemporary art. The gallery has an annual program featuring various exposicions of spanish and international artists, working with different media: painting, sculpture, video, photography, installations and sound art. In addition to these expositions, the Gallery arranges performances, conferences and other activities. From Canary Islands, Galería ATC grows dynamic relationships between the fringe and the cultural production centres. Their roots in Spain and USA and their imminent connection to Africa, allow them to operate as a cultural intersection space. Their program reflects the commitment to support artists with plenty of voices and in different moments of their careers.

Galería ATC will present, within the One Project project of Art Madrid, unseen art works by the artists Alona Harpaz and Nicolás Laiz Placeres.

The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.

Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.

Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.

The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.

This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.

The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.