The new Art Week begins in Madrid, turning the capital into the international center of contemporary art. At 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 23, ART MADRID opens its doors until Sunday, February 27, at the Galería de Cristal del Palacio de Cibeles, an emblematic place full of light that welcomes the fair year after year with affection, which can be visited every day from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Art Madrid'22 is the fair that imprints a strong multidisciplinary character, in its 17th edition brings together 35 national and international galleries, representing more than 160 artists working with painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography and video art, from the early twentieth century to the present day. The fair is characterized by being a proposal close and open to all audiences who want to know the reality of the contemporary art world.

ART MADRID is sponsored by One Shot Hotels, Liquitex and Catawiki; and with the collaboration of the Proyector platform; 9915. Contemporary Art Collectors Association; and the photographic entrepreneurship school Too Many Flash.

Juan Genovés

Acuden, 2017

Obra gráfica muy intervenida a mano por el artista. Ed de 10

74 x 60cm

EXHIBITION PROPOSAL

A total of 35 galleries have been selected by a committee to exhibit in the current edition of ART MADRID, 10 of which are international galleries from Portugal, Germany, France, Brazil, Netherlands, Taiwan, Lithuania and Cuba.

The complete list is made up of: 3 Punts Galeria (Barcelona), Alba Cabrera Gallery (Valencia), Arena Martínez Projects (Madrid), Art Lounge Gallery (Lisboa), ARTITLEDcontemporary (Herpen), Aurora Vigil-Escalera (Gijón), Collage Habana (La Habana), DDR Art Gallery (Madrid), Dr.Robot Gallery (Valencia), FLECHA (Madrid), Galería BAT alberto cornejo (Madrid), Galería de la Bálgoma (Madrid), Galería Espiral (Noja), Galería Hispánica Contemporánea (Madrid-Mx DF), Galería Jorge Alcolea (Madrid), Galería Kreisler (Madrid), Galería La Aurora (Murcia), Galería Luisa Pita (Santiago de Compostela), Galeria São Mamede (Lisboa), Galerie Alex Serra (Köln), Galerie LJ (París), GÄRNA Art Gallery (Madrid), Helarea (Madrid), Inéditad (Barcelona), Jackie Shor Arte (São Paulo), Kur Art Gallery (San Sebastián), MA Arte Contemporáneo (Palma), Marita Segovia (Madrid), Moret Art (A Coruña), Nuno Sacramento (Ílhavo), Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero), Shiras Galería (Valencia), Studija Mindiuzarte/Kaunas (Kaunas), Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo (Barcelona), Yiri Arts (Taipei).

Miguel Piñeiro

Bloody Mary Mix 15.22 fl.Oz, 2021-2022

Acrilico y oleo sobre tabla

80 x 80cm

"ONE SHOT COLLECTOR", ART MADRID'S COMMITMENT TO COLLECTING

With the support of One Shot Hotels, ART MADRID offers visitors the "One Shot Collectors" initiative, a collecting program integrated into the fair, whose commitment is to continue building bridges so that the public can access contemporary art. This initiative is aimed at both professionals in the sector and contemporary art lovers who are thinking of getting started in collecting and would like to be accompanied and guided during their visit to the fair.

In this edition, ART MADRID will be advised by Ana Suárez Gisbert, a law graduate and expert appraiser with extensive experience in the art market.

The "One Shot Collectors" initiative also includes the "Iconosphere" tour curated by Natalia Alonso. This is a different way of looking at the fair, allowing visitors to tour the fair and delve into specific aspects of the works and the 12 selected artists. The curator will conduct a guided tour on Thursday 24 and Friday 25, at 5 pm.

David Delgado Ruiz

[UnReality] Refugiados en las Meninas de Velazquez., 2017

Fotografía Analógica y Digital, Impresión Certificada en Papel Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm · 100% Cotton. Museum Standard Cotton Paper.

70 x 50cm

ART MADRID - PROYECTOR, A SPACE FOR AVANT-GARDE ART

ART MADRID renews its alliance with PROYECTOR, a platform for the dissemination of the moving image, emphasizing its most experimental, contemporary and committed character. On this occasion, the program presented revolves around the concept of "loop".

On Wednesday 23rd, the ARTMADRID-PROYECTOR stand will host, at 8pm, the performance "Always But a Stone Thrown Away" by Gary Hill, pioneer artist of new media art; while on Friday 25th, at 8pm, it will be the turn of Llorenç Barber, pioneer of Spanish sound art, who will perform a sound action exclusively for the fair.

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.