The artists José Benítez, Marifé Núñez, Johan Wahlstromand Ángela Lergo, are participating in Art Madrid with the gallery Es.Arte Gallery, which is making its debut at the fair with an exhibition proposal where awareness and reflection define the discourse.

Social criticism, feminism, individual and collective conscience, construction and destruction, are the main subjects of concern of the four artists who participate in Art Madrid with Es.Arte Gallery.

Johan Wahlstrom

The Art of Flying Part 2, 2019

Mixed media

101 x 76cm

Johan Wahlstrom

The Art of Flying Part 1, 2019

Mixed media

101 x 76cm

Johan Wahlstrom (Sweden, 1959), describes in his art work the current political and social panorama. His first approach to art was with music, but after twenty years of a successful musical career, he abandons rock and roll and begins to take an interest in painting.

The Swedish artist is a great observer of our time. In the art works belonging to his series "The Art of Flying ", the artist draws human figures in backgrounds of faded landscapes. Meanwhile, in his "Abstract Paintings ", Wahlstrom explores and creates more aggressive forms between positive and negative space, focusing more on abstract forms than on the narrative image. Despite of these changes, man remains the center of his art work, and in some of his abstractions a human face will dissolve among the stains of color. Wahlstrom explores the tense world political situation in which we live today. His art work evokes the absurdity we encounter every day as a result of forces beyond our control.

Marifé Núñez

I love Louis Vuitton, 2019

Neocollage

170 x 140cm

The artist from Cordoba Marifé Núñez, has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions throughout Europe. In her works, we can see a reflection of the individual, collective and even universal conscience.

The eye that sees everything appears in the most recent series of Marifé Núñez, "Ángeles perdidos", emphasized as a neon eye (God) that observes the spectator and leads him to reflection. Full of symbolism, it is a reflection that goes beyond the physical plane, reaching the spiritual plane through the incorporation of the Man of Vitruvius, a perfect combination between the square, represented by the body, and the spherical, which represents the spirit.

In her "Ángeles perdidos", the woman is the protagonist of the events. An empowered woman who with her gaze, naive but defiant at the same time, shows herself to be a prey to banality and still aware of the power that her wings manifest. According to the art critic Marin Ivanović: "her focus on women as the protagonists of events is very close to feminist theories of gender inversion, which place women in situations previously reserved for men".

José Benítez

Brahma 1, 2018

Oil on cardboard

97 x 67cm

José Benítez (Málaga, 1963), depicts in his art works two possible paths for the human being: construction or destruction.

Through his fantastic beings and his infinite labyrinths, Benítez takes us to a utopian world, full of sublime landscapes full of ruins and inhabited by monstrous characters. In his art works, the notion of time and space is non-existent, organic forms dissolve and objects are complex organisms in continuous metamorphosis.

José Benítez's chromatic palette is reduced to the minimum expression. A special care in the drawing added to the dominion of the lights and shades, accentuated in addition by the use of gray tonalities and sepias, they approach Benítez to the baroque painting, more concretely to the series of black paintings of Goya.

"The sunshine of your smile", Ángela Lergo

Finally, we will be able to see in the gallery's stand Es.Arte Gallery, the impressive three-dimensional representations of the Sevillian artist Ángela Lergo. Lergo seeks to generate sensations and emotions in the spectator through sculpture and performance, transforming it into "a feminine message".

“Her creations, always linked to Salustiano's painting, are fed by the painter's universe. They start from the timeless aesthetics of his paintings and then fly on their own,", says the journalist Margot Molina.

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.