Art Madrid'23 – BAT Alberto Cornejo Gallery in Art Madrid\'15

Vista de Madrid. Leticia Felgueroso.

 

The gallery Bat Alberto Cornejo is a space of more than 25 years of professional experience in Contemporary Art sector. With a clear bet for the quality of works and the selection of artists, this gallery counts on a magnific space in which all disciplines pieces are hosted, from sculpture to photography, drawing, painting and print art. Bat is specially focused on the national and international promotion, edition and exhibition of contemporary artists, and with this aim it has attended numerous art fairs in and out of our frontiers, like ARCO, Art'Basel, Art Chicago, Estampa, Saga, Arte Lisboa, Arte Santander and Art Madrid.

 
 

House XVI. Rubén Martín de Lucas.

 

In the gallerism profession, Bat has always shown a special sense to seeking for new creators, with emergent artists with a promising trajectory. In this searching process it is essential to enter into a nearness relationship with the artists and their work, as the own Alberto explains: "Heart is moved first, you have literally to fall in love with the works of an artist. With years passing, the gallerist develops a special instinct that gives us clues. Without doubt, it is necessary to combine heart with intellect and bet always for the work executed with sensibility, intelligence, quality and plastic rigour”.

 
 

House XVII. Rubén Martín de Lucas.

 

Bat's proposal for Art Madrid'15 comes full of established classics and new discoveries: Carmen Pastrana, Pepe Puntas, Gustavo Díaz Sosa, Pablo Lambertos, Leticia Felgueroso, Carlos Alberts, Rubén Martín de Lucas, Diego Canogar, José Ramón Lozano and Xurxo Gómez-Chao.

 

The work of Rubén Martín de Lucas must be stood out. The professional trajectory of this artists from Madrid has suffered a surprising change when after having started his engineering studies he decided to quit everything so he could completely dedicate to art. This creative immersion, started in 2002, led him to become a prolific artist ant to combine his individual production with the active collaboration in artists collectives. Among them, we must highlight Boa Mistura, creators group characterized by their performances in urban media and their studied and sensationalist plays of perspectives, of big dimensions and spectacular visual impact.¨Ruben brings to Art Madrid a series of oneiric landscapes pieces, with a clear real referent, but burdened of an colourist weight that provides them a surrealistic and important value.

 
 

De la serie Burócratas y Padrinos. Gustavo Díaz Sosa.

 

Another young artist is Gustavo Díaz Sosa, born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba. He started a career as teacher in the own National Academy of Fine Arts “San Alejandro”, where he had studied, before he decided to project his professional career in Spain. He arrives to our country in 2004 after having being awarded with the Arteleku scholarship for an artistic stay in San Sebastián, and four years later he decided to settle in the capital. The work of this creator has the characteristic of being at mid-way between the sketch and a finished piece. The lightness of his lines passes on quickness and freshness, and it achieves to transmit the inner sensation of the creative process, like if the author had been interrupted in this exact moment. Among the subjects chosen for his creations, Gustavo does not avoid his critical will of social surroundings in which he lives and, in many times, the matters make reference to the main issues of mankind and its relationship with power and money.

 

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.