Art Madrid'19 focuses its activities program on a discipline that arouses both fascination and curiosity: video art. Although the adjective "innovator" does not sit well with a path of evolution and creative growth of something more than half a century, the truth is that this artistic branch still poses numerous challenges for art lovers, and is far from being something usual and common in the main exhibition circuits.

In spite of this, the moving image has true devotees who have focused on knowing the artists and understanding a language that can be both close and complex at the same time. The world of media offers infinite possibilities and is gradually gaining supporters, this mission is passionately entrusted to the video art platform PROYECTOR, which has been organizing a festival dedicated exclusively to this discipline for more than a decade.

Frame from "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This", by Carlos Aires, 2016

To contribute to this work and make this art field known to the public, Art Madrid's program of activities includes three excellent projection cycles curated by PROYECTOR, with works by the leading video art artists of our time, including the exceptional Teresa Sapey collection. Thus, on Thursday 21, Friday 22 and Saturday of 23 February, the auditorium of the Sala Alcalá 31 becomes a mandatory date to enter this addictive and vibrant field with three selected proposals titled "Woman as subject of the video art","From the present body to the performance body’’ and ‘’Cities". These cycles are an opportunity to get to know the work of Candice Breitz, Hussein Chalayan, Paula Lafuente, Carlos Llavata, Francesca Fini, Gianluca Abbate, Márcia Beatriz Granero, Daniel Lo Iacono, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou or Katherinne Fiedler, these being only some of them.

Cristina Garrido, "#JWIITMTESDSA? (Just what is it that makes today's exhibitions so different, so appealing?)" screening, 2015.

The Art Madrid-PROJECTOR'19 program also hosts conversations with professionals and artists in which, from different perspectives, a very particular approach will be presented to the international video art scene. These days of debate and reflection are the ideal framework to address some major issues that this discipline poses, starting with the collection of audiovisual pieces, which we can discuss with the famous collector specialized in video art Teresa Sapey.

Indeed, the fact of collecting is a human attitude that hides emotions, feelings and passions that reveal much about who is behind. Usually, when visiting a collection we ask ourselves questions such as why or when, a search for reasons and references that ease our understanding. With video art, this curiosity is, if possible, even more profound, because this field is not understood by the naked eye, it requires attention and time and it reveals, possibly with greater precision, the possessor’ intimacies, the contrasts of his personality. But what leads us to collect video art and what can it offer us?

Eugenio Ampudia, "Dónde dormir 5 (Palau)", 2015, "Dónde Dormir" series, 2008-15.

In the quest of getting closer to understanding video art collecting we have had the opportunity to interview Teresa Sapey, who revealed to us her experience as a collector of "art in movement".

To what point do life and collection merge? What is a collection to you?

In theory, the word "collection" can be used when possessing beyond five elements of the same family. I would prefer not to define myself as a collector because there are collectors who have hundreds of pieces, so I prefer to define myself as an art lover that occasionally, and when the budget allows it, buys a piece. I buy mostly for personal and hedonistic reasons more than to show-off or social reasons.

The pieces of video art that we have, at first were going to be a fundamental part of the architecture studio. I have always dreamed of having a studio with a room where the client arrived and before meeting us as a studio, saw a very white and minimal table with the projection of a key piece by Marina Abramovic: herself with a skeleton on top. This image must have been the first contact between life and death, between dressed and nude, very metaphorical just as our work, full and empty, project and not project. Things have not happened this way, but a big part of the studio is decorated with video art pieces.

Marina Abramovic, "Nude with Skeleton", Teresa Sapey collection (4/5 edition), 2002-05.

Appealing to the transformative ability of art, could you mention any work in the collection that has changed your way of being and collecting?

Without a doubt, I have to say when I discovered Charles Sandison, his way of dealing with art and using the bible in real time, his osmosis to communicate with the observer, a work of art is always designed to be looked at and admired. In Charles Sandison I noticed a penetration between artist and observer. It completely changed my way of living art and seeing it. From that moment I understood that for me in our 21st century, art had gained the fourth dimension that did not exist before, the artist always sought to represent the fourth dimension and now he has finally achieved it.

Collecting video art may seem unusual and minority, however, it is a practice that is slowly reaffirmed; and it could not be otherwise, if we think about the age of information in which we are immersed, a time where everything could be reduced to the spectrum of images and appearances that video art tries to account for.

Bill Viola, image of "Mery", video installation at St Paul’s Cathedral, 2016.

After these words by Sapey, we can reflect that collecting responds to "this avid and ambitious desire of possessing the object for the benefit of the owner, or even the viewer, is one of the most original features of the art of Western civilization" (Mythological, 1971). These words from the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss reveal one of the most complex and interesting aspects of the contemporary individual: the way in which he lives and looks at images, and the passionate impulse that he feels almost immediately by possessing them and owning them forever.

This property ostentation goes back especially to the Renaissance when artistic images were not only an instrument of knowledge but also of possession, wealth and political propaganda. Likewise, this obsession for the artistic object continues to be inherent in the society of our time and, in spite of being aware of the many possibilities that can drive the contemporary collector, we will focus on that attentive and enthusiastic vision of art, abandoning any investor and traditionalist view, we will focus in definitive, on the perspective of the passionate collector.

Isidro Varcárcel Medina, "Programación variada" video installation, 2016.

José María de Francisco and Luis Caballero, in the prologue of their exemplary text Conversations with contemporary art collectors (Madrid, 2018), define the collection of contemporary art as "a phenomenon in which three forces from three ancestral domains of human desires and needs embodied in Greek mythology by the three graces, daughters of Zeus: beauty (Algaea), social habit (Eufrosine) and material wealth (Talia). "These three virtues are the background decisions of conceiving a collection, which in many cases means a relationship of analogy with the process of life of each collector or lover of contemporary art. It would be therefore licit to speak of life and collection as a whole because what does the passionate collector look for in each new acquisition if not expanding the mental gaze of the reality that surrounds him. Thus, the passionate collector will be interested in those pieces that awaken in him a feeling or an emotion that remained dormant in his interior and that is suddenly activated, discovering a new corner of his essence that shapes his perception of the world and reaffirms his existence as an individual. And it is precisely in that encounter with the work when the phenomenon of desire occurs that leads to wanting possession of it and adding it to the rest of a collection of thoughts that end up weaving an intimate and organic story that describes its passage throw life.

In this sense it seems to evoke one of the most interesting aspects of the ontology of art in any of its stages: the meaning that the author projects in his work and the multiple interpretations and meanings that all those who look at experiences while looking at it, a cycle that seems to close completely with the figure of the collector, which in a certain way means a last glance.

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.