At Art Madrid, we are delighted to present the fifth edition of our Curated Interview Program. On this occasion, independent curator and art critic Adonay Bermúdez (Lanzarote, Spain, 1985) takes the helm of the program, bringing his extensive international experience and sensitivity to contemporary artistic practices.

Under the title “Conversations with Adonay Bermúdez”, we will explore the work of eight artists featured in the 21st edition of the fair. This program offers the opportunity to engage with their creative processes, understand their sources of inspiration, and learn about their perspectives on contemporary art. In doing so, we reaffirm our commitment to facilitating encounters between the public and artistic practice, providing a space for reflection and dialogue during Art Week.

INVITED ARTISTS

Carmen Baena (Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo), Sergio Rocafort (Shiras Galería), Chamo San (Inéditad Gallery), Cedric Le Corf (Loo & Lou Gallery), Daniel Bum (CLC ARTE), Iyán Castaño (Galería Arancha Osoro), Julián Manzelli (Chu) (g · gallery), and DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) (Galería La Mercería)

DIALOGUE AS A CURATORIAL PRACTICE

The interviews included in this selection from Art Madrid’26 form a coherent map of shared concerns embedded in diverse practices, languages, and trajectories. Far from offering a homogeneous narrative, the voices of the eight artists reveal deep affinities around experience, time, and the relationship between artistic making and knowledge. In all cases, art is conceived less as the production of finished objects than as a situated process: a practice of attentiveness that unfolds in dialogue with territory, memory, and the artist’s own vulnerability..

One of the most significant recurring themes is the understanding of territory as an active agent. Whether it is the landscape of southern Spain, sand shaped by the tide, the everyday environment, or the exhibition space, the place ceases to function as a mere backdrop and becomes an interlocutor. This shift entails an ethics of listening: artists do not impose a predetermined form, but work from traces, marks, and temporal sedimentation. Territory thus appears as a living archive, carrying affective, geological, or cultural memories that the artistic gesture activates without closing them off.

Most of the practices presented here are grounded in open methodologies, where initial planning operates as a hypothesis rather than a fixed program. Chance, error, and the unexpected are not mistakes to be corrected, but productive forces that directly contribute to meaning-making. This openness does not imply a lack of rigor but represents a different mode of thought: an embodied knowledge that emerges from doing, repetition, and direct engagement with materials.

In this context, materiality becomes a form of knowledge. Marble and embroidery, pigments exposed to the elements, unstable geometries, silent pictorial surfaces, or repeated figures function as devices for sensitive knowledge. Materials do not illustrate concepts—they produce them. Through them, a constant tension is articulated between control and intuition, formal restraint and affective charge, which underpins both pictorial practices and research closer to performance or ecological concerns.

In response to contemporary acceleration, these works propose active pauses: spaces of duration, waiting, and suspension where the gaze can linger. Silence, stillness, and repetition operate as conditions for expanded perception, where the minimal and seemingly insignificant acquire existential density. In many cases, this slow temporality is connected to autobiographical processes or complex emotional states, making artistic practice a tool for subjective processing and care.

The interviews conducted for Art Madrid’26 highlight the importance of direct dialogue with the artist as a critical tool. This interview model does not seek to illustrate the work from the outside but accompanies its internal logic, allowing the thought sustaining it to emerge in the first person. Delving into the processes, doubts, and decisions that structure artistic practice not only enriches the understanding of the works but also activates a shared space for reflection, where art asserts itself as a form of living, situated, and constantly evolving knowledge.

Adonay Bermúdez. Critic and curator of the Art Madrid’26 Interview Program.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Carmen Baena (Benalúa de Guadix, Granada, 1967) is a multidisciplinary Spanish artist based in Murcia, where she has developed most of her career. A graduate in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Baena works with diverse techniques such as marble sculpture, embroidery on paper and canvas, and photographic experimentation, combining them in a profound investigation into the habitability of the body, time, and space.

Her work draws inspiration from nature and the landscapes of her childhood in Granada, creating spiritual and sensory landscapes that invite viewers into intimate, poetic, and enigmatic spaces. In recent series, color, circles, and stitched thread sutures combine to convey sensations of movement, memory, and emotion, generating immersive visual experiences. Carmen Baena has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Spain and abroad, and her work is included in public and private collections, including institutions in Murcia and Valencia, local town halls, and museums such as the Postal Museum of Madrid.

Sergio Rocafort (Valencia, 1995) holds a degree in Fine Arts and a Master’s in Artistic Production from the Universitat Politècnica de València. He has exhibited his work at Shiras Galería, the Centro Cultural La Nau, Centro del Carmen de Cultura Contemporánea, Galería 9, Las Naves, and Palacio Marqués del Campo, all in Valencia. He has also participated in art fairs such as the X Feria Marte in Castellón and the XXXII Estampa Fair in Madrid.

Rocafort has been a finalist in prominent competitions, including the III María Isabel Comengé Painting Biennial and the XX Painting Prize of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos. He has received honorable mentions in the XXV National Painting Prize Fundación Mainel and the LXXX Premi Centelles, as well as awards such as the XXVII Ciutat d’Algemesí Painting Prize and the XIII Manolo Valdés Visual Arts Competition, among many others.

Chamo San (Barcelona, 1987) studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but it was only after his formal training that he began to develop his own artistic language. As an illustrator, he has collaborated with numerous prestigious clients and brands over 15 years, and as an artist, he has published books and exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions across Europe and North America.

His work moves between drawing and painting, often exploring self-publishing and graphic work. His production is characterized by a strong figurative style combined with technical and narrative explorations that originate in line and texture and gradually evolve toward brushwork and staining. His universe is nourished by notes made in small sketchbooks from direct observation of his surroundings and personal experiences.

Cedric Le Corf (Bühl, Germany, 1985) graduated with honors in 2009 from the École Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Lorient (France). He lives and works between Brittany and other European contexts, developing an artistic practice deeply connected to sculpture and reflections on the body, landscape, and memory. His work engages in constant research on materiality and image, where the anatomical and the territorial intertwine as metaphors for the human condition. Influenced by the Rhenish and Armorican legacy and confronted with the pathos of Grünewald (Baldung Grien), the hanged figures from Jacques Callot’s Les Misères de la Guerre, Ankou, and the dance macabre of Kernascléden, as well as the horrors of the Sobibor mass graves, Le Corf seeks, through adherence to a motif, to mitigate the weight of the subjects addressed in sculpture, painting, or printmaking.

He has undertaken several artist residencies, including the Fondation Dufraine in Chars, the Académie des Beaux-Arts (2016–2018), the Spitzberg Expedition Residency (2017), and was a resident at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid (2018–2019) and the Miró Foundation in Palma de Mallorca (2019). In 2017, he was awarded the Georges Coulon Prize (Sculpture) by the Institut de France – Académie des Beaux-Arts. He has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France, Germany, Spain, and Belgium.

Daniel Bum (Villena, 1994) holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and develops his pictorial practice within the contemporary framework of new figuration, drawing on influences from art brut, naïve aesthetics, manga, and urban art. His work creates a hybrid territory where disparate visual references coexist under a deeply personal and subjective narrative logic.

Far from mimetic representation, his canvases do not depict real scenes but reconfigure fragments of memory, emotional states, and thoughts through a direct and deliberately schematic visual language. In this symbolic construction, lived experience intertwines with fiction, generating images full of ambiguity and affective resonance. His compositions are inhabited by solitary figures, depicted frontally, with absent gazes and minimal gestures emphasizing vulnerability. These seemingly approachable characters reveal, however, an enigmatic dimension marked by latent tension. This ambivalence—between tenderness and unease, the familiar and the inexplicable—is a key expressive feature of his work.

He has participated in exhibitions and art fairs such as Obertura Carabanchel 2025 and Apertura Madrid 2025 alongside the Valencian gallery CLC Arte, and in Zokei with CLC Arte. In 2024, he held his first solo exhibition, Mamá, estoy bien, in Valencia, and participated in Detrás de la Piel at the FIC Contemporary Art Festival in Villena.

Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) graduated in Fine Arts from UPV/EHU (2022) and is a master printmaker in engraving and printmaking techniques from EAO (2018). His practice explores the relationship between nature, sea, and territory, primarily through painting and installation. He has received the Asturias Joven Prize in Visual Arts, Second Prize in the XX Casimiro Baragaña National Contemporary Art Competition, and production grants from Caja Rural and the Gijón City Council, among others. His work is part of the Artistic Heritage of the Spanish Royal Family and the collection of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, as well as other institutional collections in Europe and the Americas. He has been a finalist in competitions such as the LVI International Art Competition of Luarca, Nicanor Piñole, and Acor Castilla y León.

He has held solo exhibitions at spaces including Sala Borrón, Casa de Cultura de Llanes, Espacio Cultural El Liceo, Galería Arancha Osoro, Kultur Leioa, and Sala Lai..., and has participated in fairs such as Estampa and Art Madrid. His work has been curated by Natalia Alonso, Luis Feas, Santiago Martínez, Ainhoa Janices, and Eliza Southwood, and he has undertaken artistic residencies in Spain and Ecuador.

Julián Manzelli (Chu) (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice explores the intersection of urban life, science, and nature through geometric-expressionist constructions oscillating between figurative and abstract. He conceived the studio as an experimental laboratory, developing work in painting, sculpture, object-making, printmaking, and public space through muralism and interventions. He currently lives in Barcelona.

He studied at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where he taught for over twelve years. Since 1998, he has been part of the DOMA collective, pioneers of conceptual urban art in Latin America, with works included in international collections and museums such as MoMA (New York), MALBA (Buenos Aires), MAR (Rio de Janeiro), and MARCO (Rosario).

In his independent career, he has exhibited at institutions such as MASP (São Paulo), MARCO (Monterrey), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), and CEART Fuenlabrada (Madrid), establishing himself as a key figure in contemporary art combining conceptual rigor and aesthetic exploration across multiple media and spaces.

DIMASLA (Valencia, 2018), the collective formed by Diana Lozano and Álvaro Jaén, develops its practice around reflections on inhabiting the world more harmoniously, understanding reality as an interconnected network of beings, spaces, and objects. Inspired by authors such as Nancy, Bachelard, and Dewey, their work is based on co-creation with the environment, where elements such as atmosphere, flora, fauna, and seasonal change act as active agents. Projects like Mono are not aware of this direct relationship between painting and landscape.

Trained in Fine Arts with a Master’s in Artistic Production from UPV, complemented by residencies in Italy and Chile, their trajectory has been recognized with awards such as the 1st Painting Prize from the University of Murcia (2025), the Arte en la Casa Bardín Prize (2023), and grants from the Spanish Ministry of Culture (2020). They have held solo exhibitions in Valencia and Alicante, participated in fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach and Untitled Miami, and were part of the RinkoKaku Project in Japan. Their work is included in collections such as the Generalitat Valenciana, DKV, Banc Sabadell, Fundación Gabarrón, and the University of Murcia.

Adonay Bermúdez. Independent curator and art critic.

ABOUT ADONAY BERMÚDEZ

Adonay Bermúdez (Lanzarote, Spain, 1985) has curated exhibitions for MEIAC (Spain), Centre del Carme (Spain), Casa África (Spain), Centro Cultural de España en México, Museo Barjola (Spain), the National Museum of Costa Rica, Sala Díaz (USA), CAAM (Spain), the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of Costa Rica, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque (Spain), the Instituto Cervantes in Rome (Italy), Bòlit Centre d’Art Contemporani (Spain), DA2 (Spain), the X Biennale di Soncino (Italy), Artpace San Antonio (USA), MUDAS – Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Madeira (Portugal), Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico), TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (Spain), the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito (Ecuador), and ExTeresa Arte Actual (Mexico), among others.

He served as Director of the International Video Art Festival Entre Islas (2014–2017), was a guest curator of PlanoLisboa 2016 (Portugal), a member of the Scientific Committee of Over The Real International Videoart Festival (Italy, 2016, 2017, and 2018), curator of Contemporary Art Month San Antonio (Texas, USA) in 2018, collaborating curator at the César Manrique Foundation (Spain, 2019–2024), curator of INJUVE 2022 (Spanish Government), and Artistic Director of the 11th Lanzarote Art Biennial 2022/2023.

More recently, he has been awarded the Line 2 Curatorial Competition of Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca (Spain, 2020), the Cultural Projects Competition Gran Canaria Espacio Digital (Spain, 2020), the Artistic Research Grant from CAAM – Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Spain, 2020), Komisario Berriak at Tabakalera (Spain, 2021), the 5th Curatorial Competition of the Valencian Community (Spain, 2023), and the 4th Curatorial Open Call of Nebrija University (Spain, 2025).

He is currently an art critic for ABC Cultural and Revista Segno. He has given lectures and workshops at the Universidad del Atlántico (Colombia), MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Italy), Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), and the Universidade da Madeira (Portugal), among others. He has also received artist-in-residence grants from The Window Paris (France), Foksal Gallery (Poland), Les Abattoirs (France), SOMA (Mexico), The Casa Chuck Residency (USA), Plataforma Caníbal (Colombia), and No Lugar (Ecuador), among others.

NEBRIJA UNIVERSITY ASSERTS AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE IN THE FACE OF THE ALGORITHMIC ERA AT ART MADRID’26

The Nebrija Space hosts a curatorial project that proposes a critical alternative to the automation of creative thought.

Nebrija University is participating in the 21st edition of Art Madrid with a curatorial project that offers a critical reflection on the relationship between art education, the market, and technology. Under the concept of Aesthetic Intelligence, the proposal positions itself as an alternative to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, prioritizing sensitivity, gesture, materiality, and experience as forms of knowledge that cannot be automated.

At a historic moment in which Artificial Intelligence is bursting onto the scene in all areas of cultural production, generating both fascination and concern, Nebrija University is committed to defending those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to algorithmic logic. This is not a question of denying the impact of technology or adopting a technophobic stance, but rather of identifying and defending those areas of knowledge that require the presence of the body, sensitivity, gesture, and lived experience.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

The central concept of the proposal is that of Aesthetic Intelligence, understood as a form of knowledge that integrates the sensory, the affective, the intuitive, and the cultural. In contrast to the logic of Artificial Intelligence, based on algorithms, recognition patterns, and the capacity for mass replication, Aesthetic Intelligence prioritizes dimensions that remain anchored in the unique human experience: the unique and unrepeatable gesture, the physical presence of the body in the creative act, the material texture of the supports and pigments, and the temporality of the creative process.

This claim takes on special importance in a context in which generative AI is capable of producing images in a matter of seconds, processing millions of previous visual references to synthesize new compositions. However, what the machine cannot replicate is precisely what constitutes the core of the aesthetic experience. The affective resonance of a specific color applied with a certain pressure on a specific surface, the intuitive decision that arises from the dialogue between the artist and the material, or the productive error that opens up unexpected paths.

Aesthetic Intelligence is thus understood as a form of epistemic resistance, a defense of those ways of knowing the world that cannot be automated because they are constitutively linked to the embodied, situated, and temporal experience of creative subjects.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Repaired passe-partout and acrylic. 18 x 18 x 48 cm. 2026.

Under the provocative neologism NotanIA SipedagogIE, which encapsulates the conceptual proposal in its very formulation: “Not so much AI, more pedagogy.” This linguistic construction, which plays with the presence and absence of fragments of the words “Artificial Intelligence” and “pedagogy,” signals a clear stance on the role of artistic training in today's technological context.

It proposes a critical pedagogy that does not reject technology but refuses to subordinate artistic learning processes to the logic of efficiency, optimization, and reproduction that characterize algorithmic systems. Faced with the temptation to use AI as a shortcut or substitute for the creative process, this pedagogy vindicates the formative value of trial and error, material experimentation, and time devoted to exploration without a predetermined goal.

A pedagogy that is also defined as empathetic, in the sense that it recognizes and values the affective and relational dimension of artistic learning, which does not understand creation as an isolated individual act but as a process that involves emotional resonances, symbolic exchanges, and collective construction of meaning. The stand itself, conceived as a choral work, embodies this understanding of creation as a shared experience.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

The methodology proposed for the project is as rigorous as it is open to experimentation. Each participating student begins their creative process by poetically appropriating a verse, a stanza that will serve as the conceptual and emotional seed of the work. The choice of poetry, as a form of language that condenses multiple and ambiguous meanings, that works with sonic and visual resonances, that suggests rather than describes, constitutes an ideal starting point for a project that champions the ineffable, that which cannot be fully translated into code.

Starting with the selection of a verse, each artist has developed a mood board conceived as a board of atmospheres and, at the same time, as a sensitive cartography of the process. This resource allows the imagery of the verse to be expanded through objects, images, textures, materials, and other elements that resonate with the initial poetic experience. It is a tool that makes the process of intersemiotic translation visible: the transition from verbal to visual language, from textual to material, highlighting the transformations and shifts that occur along the way.

The next step involves developing a two-dimensional work that deliberately avoids written language. This restriction seeks to prioritize visual and material exploration over textual narrative, relying on the communicative power of form, color, texture, and composition. The work must speak for itself, without the need for verbal explanations to mediate between the piece and the viewer.

The creative process is conceived from an experimental logic similar to that of a laboratory, where trial, error, correction, and rehearsal are an integral part of the method. No predetermined result is sought; rather, the work is allowed to emerge from the dialogue between the initial intention and the possibilities (and resistances) of the materials.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

The booth that houses the Nebrija Space is conceived as a work of art in itself, with a choral and transitory character. Inspired by Madrid's SER Zones, those areas of regulated temporary parking, the exhibition space is designed as a territory of symbolic transit, a place of ephemeral occupation that invites reflection on presence, desire, and temporality.

This metaphor of SER Zones is particularly powerful, because just as these urban spaces allow for the temporary occupation of public space under certain conditions, the stand is presented as a territory that artists temporarily occupy during the fair, establishing a dialogue between permanence (the works as physical objects that will remain after the event) and transience (the specific spatial configuration that exists only during the days of the fair).

The choral nature of the project underscores the collective dimension of artistic creation. It is not a sum of individualities but a polyphony of voices that intertwine, resonate, and dialogue with each other. Each individual work maintains its autonomy but takes on new meanings in relation to the others, generating a fabric of visual, conceptual, and affective correspondences.

Marialex Arcaya. The wine cellar. Acrylic on wood. 80 x 160 cm. 2026.

The project brings together the work of seven students from the Fine Arts Degree program at Nebrija University: Marialex Arcaya develops “La bodega” (The Cellar), a reflection on everyday objects as containers of memory and identity. Based on the verse: "And at the bottom of my favorite beach bag there is sand, rusty coins, and a receipt for ice cream that no longer exists. Summer can be preserved in layers", the artist explores Venezuelan bodegas as spaces of nostalgia and belonging. Through a series of acrylic paintings on canvas depicting products and packaging, she investigates how the most mundane objects can function as repositories of memories and markers of cultural identity. Her work raises questions about what we erase and what we preserve, about how the passage of time transforms both objects and ourselves, celebrating the capacity for rebirth and transformation that characterizes the human experience.

Laura Nogales. Another Spring. Acrylic and embroidery on canvas. 94.5 x 38.6 inches. 2026.

Laura Nogales participates with “Another Spring,” a textile installation that explores the decomposition and deconstruction of the concept of femininity in a transitory environment: the shower. Her work, constructed from scraps, recycled clothing remnants, stockings, and various types of fillings, forms an abstract mass that represents decomposed femininity in constant mutation. The drain functions as a symbolic element that swallows everything, witnessing intimate transformations. Nogales addresses how femininity as a shared experience suffers great ups and downs in the current context, where machismo is making a strong comeback in the media and social networks. Her textile proposal generates emotional ambiguity in the viewer, who may feel attracted or repelled by the figure, reflecting the contradictions inherent in the experience of constructing and defending female identity in an adverse context. Her work takes as its reference the fragment of the poem: “Above the shower, the steam draws maps that fade away".

Inés López. Sedentary. Digital photography. 30 x 40 cm. 2026.

Inés López presents Sedentario, a work inspired by the verse: “There, dust particles are an archive in suspension.” The project reflects on the capacity of domestic spaces to preserve what the body forgets when they cease to be inhabited. The photographic series is set inside a house under construction, in rooms suspended between use and abandonment, where absence manifests itself as a silent accumulation of matter, traces, and time. Architectural plans and projections in an unfinished building expand the proposal, establishing a dialogue between the projected space and the lived space, between what was once inhabited and what has not yet begun to be inhabited. The work thus proposes a meditation on the transience of the body in the face of the silent persistence of architecture.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

Verónica Bergua presents “Cartografía del tío Pablo” (Uncle Pablo's Cartography), a deeply personal project that explores the relationship between compulsive hoarding, mental health, and emotional territory. Through a video installation that combines minimalist photography of objects taken from the room of her uncle, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Diogenes syndrome, and kleptomania, Bergua constructs a visual map of mental chaos materialized in physical space. The sequence of images, presented at varying speeds, generates an experience of anxiety in the viewer that reflects the nature of compulsive hoarding. Her work invites us to reflect on our own relationship with objects, on the boundaries between need and attachment, and on how the territory we inhabit can become a mirror of our mental territory. His proposal is inspired by the verses: “Under the bed... objects accumulate that we don't remember losing.” “A museum without texts or labels: the drawer of cables from broken devices.” “The box of expired medicines holds the history of ailments that no longer hurt.”

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

Blanca Lanaspa presents “Testigo 176.8,” a work based on the verse: "The coat rack in the entrance holds what we are before we enter and after we leave. A vertical threshold where transitions hang.“ Her proposal takes the form of a ceramic pegboard, a combinatorial board with removable pieces of different surfaces, glazes, and textures. Each element functions as a ”sensitive accident," the result of processes involving both aesthetic planning and material chance. The pieces explore states of matter: sprouts, leaks, overflows, erosions, cracked surfaces, contractions, and expansions. The tactile and interactive nature of the work invites the viewer to engage with it directly through their body. Accompanied by a mood board documenting the ceramic research process, the piece celebrates the unpredictability of materials and the beauty of the unsystematic.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Detail. Repaired mat and acrylic. 7.1 x 7.1 x 18.7 inches. 2026.

Pablo Padilla presents “Untitled,” an architectural sculpture inspired by the verse: “The mismatched sock is not lost: it inhabits a place that does not exist.” Conceived as a spatial analogy for the search for fulfillment, the piece proposes an architectural archetype that refers to the world of ideas; an imagined place, necessary and yet unattainable. Constructed from thin cardboard, the work takes the form of impossible, labyrinthine structures inhabited by scale figures that wander through corridors, staircases, and dead-end rooms. These spaces, simultaneously tense and contemplative, combine the romanticism of introspection with the inhospitable coldness of brutalism. The work creates a surreal atmosphere that oscillates between peaceful and tense, inviting a sensory and emotional experience of shared loneliness, isolation, and the search for mental refuges that do not exist in the physical world.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Detail. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

Álvaro Fernández presents “Remember/Forget,” a work inspired by the verse: "In the elevator mirror, two people are reflected without touching each other. What separates them is not air: it is the possibility of saying nothing." Through hybrid works that combine manual transfers on fabric with digitally altered photographs, Fernández explores silence, shared presence, and the coexistence of intimate worlds that do not touch. His transfers, made using gel plates or lavender oil, generate unstable and deteriorated images, like memories in the process of fading. The fragmentation and displacement of photographic elements multiply the scenes, creating layers of overlapping temporality. His work materializes the fragility of memories and the power of silence as a space for nonverbal intimacy.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

At a time when the debate on Artificial Intelligence and artistic creation is intensifying, with positions ranging from uncritical enthusiasm to outright rejection, Nebrija University's proposal for Art Madrid'26 offers a third way, a critical stance that does not deny technological reality but clearly defends those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to automation.

The concept of Aesthetic Intelligence proposes an epistemological alternative that recognizes the validity of forms of knowledge based on sensitivity, intuition, bodily experience, and affective resonance. These are not “minor” or subsidiary forms of knowledge with respect to rational or algorithmic knowledge, but equally valid modalities that are absolutely fundamental in the field of artistic creation.

This curatorial project thus represents a valuable contribution to the contemporary debate on technology and culture, proposing that university art education should not be limited to preparing students to adapt to the market or the tools available, but should equip them with critical skills, material sensitivity, and awareness of the specificity of their practice.

Art Madrid'26 will thus host a proposal that, beyond its individual aesthetic quality, constitutes a collective reflection on the present and future of artistic creation, on the role of educational institutions in training new generations of artists, and on the need to defend spaces for experimentation, slowness, and materiality in an accelerated and increasingly virtualized world. Through this project, Nebrija University reaffirms the irreplaceable value of Aesthetic Intelligence as a form of knowledge and as a practice of resistance against algorithmic homogenization, committing to a pedagogy that places sensory experience, bodily gesture, and affective resonance at the center as fundamental dimensions of the human condition.