This exclusive Madrid Lager’ format of 50 cl. of Cervezas La Virgen can only be enjoyed during the celebration of Art Madrid. In addition, the winning design will receive a prize of 500 euros.

The chosen product to inspire you is one of the most acclaimed beers of La Virgen, the Madrid Lager, awarded in the last three years as best Lager style Helles of Spain in the World Beer Awards. It is the first variety that La Virgen made, the more classic and authentic, the perfect draft beer which is also available in 33cl cans since last year. As their creators explain, "the can of Madrid Lager is here to stay and you can take it anywhere" because "we love the can and the possibilities that surround it". The design has to be made for the 50 cl-format, which it is made exclusively for the fair. The only limit to your creativity will be the size of the product format: 135mm high by 204mm wide.

Although designs must be able to be reproduced in digital format for later printing, so it is preferable to present works of digital illustration or graphic design, you can work from any technique or theme. You can also work with the metallic qualities of the material because the label will be produced as a transparent vinyl, so if you leave blank spaces in your design, you will see the metallic colour in those areas. In addition, the design should visually integrate the logos of Cervezas La Virgen and Art Madrid'19, as well as the sentence "Special Edition Art Madrid'19".

If your passion is as strong as that of La Virgen's master brewers, surely you have more than one design in mind. Do not worry because each artist can submit up to 5 proposals, as long as they are unpublished. Participation is open to all kinds of creators, artists or professionals, however, do not forget that the deadline for submission is February the 10th.

View of the taprooms and La Virgen´s Fabric

The selection process is divided into two parts: first, there will be a pre-selection of 10 finalists by Art Madrid, whose designs will be published on our website, newsletter and social networks. In the second phase, open voting will be made on Instagram with the hashtag #ConcursoLaVirgenAM19, this vote will also influence the final criteria of Cervezas La Virgen. The winning design will be announced the week before the Art Madrid’19 fair.

La Virgen craft beers are made since 2011 "without tricks, without haste", entirely with natural ingredients, following the best traditional processes while incorporating the latest technology, respecting the environment and promoting responsible consumption. Always from the heart, because they are lucky to be able to do what they really like. Therefore, creativity and quality are characteristics shared by Arte Madrid and La Virgen; Join us in this remarkable experience and show us your talent.

Good luck!

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.