We make a small review of our cultural agenda in Madrid in the month of March, with interesting proposals that you cannot miss.

For the nostalgic people, an exhibition designed to recall the moments of childhood full of imagination and adventures: "Historietas del Tebeo: 1917-1977", in the ABC Museum. From El Capitán Trueno to Tom Thumb, this showing includes a total of 300 works that go through our national history of the band designed since the birth of the "TBO". Until March 16th.

Cover of the no. 107 of “El Capitán Trueno”

"Generación 2018" in La Casa Encendida presents the work of the winners in the latest call Generations, in which more than 500 artists under 35 have participated. 10 projects of young creators in a sample curated by Ignacio Cabrero, in which the main common point is the concern for the current state of contemporary society, with its weaknesses and strengths. Until April 15th.

Serafín Álvarez, from the project “Umbral”, photography, 2017.

Among the classics, the exhibition devoted to Toulouse-Lautrec in the Canal de Isabel II Foundation is essential, which includes for the first time in Spain one of the broadest collections of advertising posters produced by this author of the Belle Époque. The exhibition presents 33 original posters in a collection of 65 works, by other contemporaries such as Mucha or Cheret. An essential visit to immerse yourself in the Paris of the early 20th century. Until May 6th.

Toulouse-Lautrec. “Jane Avril”, 1899. Image by courtesy of Musée d’Ixelles

The photographer Ed van der Elsken has in our country his first great retrospective. The Bárbara de Braganza show-room of the Mapfre Foundation presents this collection of one of the most cosmopolitan authors of the 20th century, in which his role as a filmmaker and editor is also explored. The exhibition has been organised by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and will be open until May 20th.

Ed van der Elsken, “Girl in the subway, Tokyo”, photography, 1981. Photo: © Ed van der Elsken / Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Nor can we forget the exhibition "Warhol. El arte mecánico" in CaixaForum Madrid. After passing through Barcelona, this collection lands in the capital to present a proposal that reflects on the artistic production in series and the role of the artist in this process, where Warhol is its main exponent. Until May 6th.

Warhol. El arte mecánico

Thirteen years have passed since its beginnings, and in all this time the Video Art Festival PROYECTOR has grown and consolidated its position as an essential event in this discipline. Since its inception, the initiative has tried to give visibility to a discipline that has always been relegated to the background in the usual exhibition circuits. Although video creation is not new, since it emerged by its own in the 60s of last century, the way to get to know it and enjoy it has not always been easy. On many occasions, the exhibitions only included a few isolated pieces within the main route, as if the video was the anecdotal contribution to the whole. However, our daily lives are invaded by moving images, and there is a paradox that video art, despite being a format of artistic expression very much in tune with the habits of today's society, remains a minority discipline

Frame from “Hel City”, by Gregorio Méndez Sáez, 2019

To some extent, PROYECTOR was born to reverse this situation, to value video as a creative format and to offer a wide, itinerant space to host a multitude of proposals, coming from inside and outside our borders. In this time, the growth of the festival has led it to travel the world, but also, to be a benchmark that each year arouses more interest. In the open call to receive proposals, they reach almost half a thousand, and a hundred works selected by the jury are a representative sample of different ways of understanding video creation, with pieces mainly from Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

In turn, PROYECTOR wants to be more than a video showcase and offers a large program with talks, workshops, masterclasses, meetings with artists, visits and concerts. A complete experience that always has the moving image as a backdrop.

El Instante Francisco Ruiz de Infante. El bosque que se mueve (errores de medida)

In this evolution, another circumstance stands out: video is a creative format that has its own codes, but it is also one of the disciplines most open to artistic hybridization and the widening of uses. The video may, therefore, be the genuine idea of an author who conceives an autonomous project to be carried out in this format, but it can also be the complementary result of an action or the documentary record of a previous performance being recorded to guarantee its survival. The versatility of the moving image and the potential that it has acquired in recent years allows us today to speak of numerous branches of art that focus on the fusion of languages and the integration of techniques and methodologies from other sectors, and in many of them, the video is still a cornerstone. So it is with technological art, interactive sound art, performance recording, the transformation from big data to image, artificial intelligence, and a long etcetera. Precisely for this reason, PROYECTOR offers a panoramic vision of this reality, with an extremely interesting program that plays with the variety and wealth of proposals.

Frame from “Herdança”, by Thiago Rocha Pitta, 2007

The 2020 edition will run from September 9th to 20th. As usual, the program displays in various venues throughout the city of Madrid, each of which will house a small section of the activities. This year the festival will count with the collaboration of the Casa Árabe, White Lab, Cruce, El Instante Fundación, ¡ésta es una PLAZA!, Extensión AVAM (Matadero Madrid), Institut Français de Madrid, Medialab Prado, Quinta del Sordo, Sala Alcalá 31, Sala El Águila, Secuencia de Inútiles and White Lab, in addition to the collaboration of the INELCOM Collection and the video art collection of Teresa Sapey.

The festival is also the ideal place to articulate the cultural fabric, since it involves numerous professionals in the sector, from curators to creators, from centres managers to critics and teachers. The 2020 program also has the collaboration of the FUSO Festival and the Museo Reina Sofía, which are providing some of their pieces for the exhibition.

In short, an appointment that lovers of contemporary art should not miss and that promises many novelties in this 13th edition.