The difficult task of defining Eduardo Balanza's work becomes easier when you share a live experience with him. We enjoyed a visit to his studio on Saturday, February 22, within the “Art Madrid-Proyector'20” action program. It was the perfect opportunity to getting to know his work and personality, and to understand the clear connections that exist between his various works. Between eclectic, versatile, technological, experimental, audiovisual, editorial... and many other qualifications applicable to the work of this author, the encounter with Eduardo helped us discover a generous artist, concerned above all with socio-political and environmental issues, who apply technology in a very rational way to his projects, and who is not satisfied with a simple reading of his pieces.

Photo by Txema Alcega

Eduardo Balanza (Murcia, 1971) graduated in Audiovisual Media, studied documentary film and screenplay at the International School of Film and Television in Havana, as well as at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He needs to travel, and for several years he was roaming between Berlin and Spain while working in theatre companies as a set designer. As a plastic artist, he has developed a multidisciplinary work taking sound and music as a starting point on which to research and build pieces, installations and performances. However, even these attempts to explain his career fall short, since, although the influence of video is evident in many of his works, in others the construction of artefacts or the emergence of conceptual discourse through periodic publications are the essence of the piece. As he himself admits: "It is true that I studied photography, screen printing, 3D, I worked in cinema, in fashion as a photographer, advertising and campaigns, theatre... The multidisciplinary involves attitude and creative concern." Indeed, Eduardo is attitude and concern.

Photo by Melisa Medina

What is clear is that Eduardo Balanza shows great humility and transparency in all his work. The transformation of each life experience into learning reveals the complexity of our world, the diversity that inhabits it, the different ways of understanding that exist and the need we have to adapt ourselves, beyond pure survival. In a recent interview, Eduardo explained: “Living has also become a bit of resistance. Living requires adaptation, as in an ice age." And part of that adaptation consists of admitting mistakes, knowing how to rectify because nothing is linear and today's society imposes on us a dictatorial obligation of permanent success totally fake without margin for error. On this, the artist comments:

Sometimes failure is pleasant. You have to lose battles, be thrown into the mud and have to get up. There is no need to be afraid to start from scratch; from failure, you learn a lot. We get frustrated very quickly, we have no stamina.

Photo by Txema Alcega

This humanistic approach to his own life trajectory has made identity, music and war his three main axes of work. Music as a factor of union, and war, of separation, and underlying these opposing forces, which sometimes collide and sometimes point in the same direction, is the collective identity. The artistic exploration of these intangible realities, but drivers of many current social movements, transforms into an infinity of projects that this author develops from his personal experience, wanting to transfer to his works all the rawness, aridity and harmony that the real world offers us. Eduardo explains that:

Where culture does not arrive, barbarism arrives. ... There is a clear absence of many values. Music, identity, collective identity, group movements are trending and the most interesting thing right now is collage. War, music and identity are my subjects, in the end, everyone talks about the same thing.

During the visit to his studio in Madrid, Eduardo presented us with the artwork “B71”, an electroacoustic instrument inspired by the baroque organs that combines sound and technology with an impressive result. The B71 organ is an instrument that works activated by vibrating loudspeakers on plates capable of connecting to meteorological data websites, according to the coordinates entered in the system to generate surround music based on loops. B71 works in both manual and automatic modes, generating its own sounds by itself. Visitors were able to fully understand its operation and test the organ while Eduardo explained all the technical implications of this installation work.

Frame from "La fragilidad de habitar", 2019, Eduardo Balanza

In addition to this and to know some of his editorial pieces in the FEU project: United Electronic Front, we were also able to enjoy his work on video. In the garage of his studio, which acts as a projection room, we watched his latest proposal: “La fragilidad de habitar”, a documentary video art work that shows the situation of extreme need in the shanty towns of temporary workers in Níjar (Almería). This piece, made in 2019, created mostly from zenith planes, brings to light a reality often ignored and shows ways of life-based on absolute subsistence. Today the work is on display at the Cepaim Foundation in Madrid.

And in the meantime, Eduardo continues working. He is currently developing some video research on hydroelectric complexes in Norway, the "Landscape Transformation" and the generation of sounds in these natural spaces, supported by the Skien Komune from Telemark.

From here we thank him for opening the door of his studio and sharing an excellent Saturday morning with us as we learned a little more about his work.

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.