Art Madrid'26 – Cristina Lucas. Manchas en el silencio

Cristina Lucas. "Clockwise, 2016". Installation. 360 clocks' mechanisms.

 

 

The artist recourses to the video-creation, the installation and the happening as a contemporary discourse to question the reality of what’s established. Educated in Fine Arts in Madrid, she now comes back to the capital with this recent work in which she keeps herself loyal to her critic essence. She was awarded the Culture Prize 2017 of the Comunidad de Madrid, in the Fine Arts category. Cristina uses art as a mean of historical research, and as an expression mechanism to convey the eternal concern of mankind upon certain universals: time, humanity.

 

 

 

Cristina Lucas."El rayo que no cesa, 2015". Video. Work under creation.

 

 

 

The current proposal by Cristina Lucas is focused on three main subject-axles: history, time and violence. Her works, of huge dimension, try to compile the universe of sensations that arise when representing the evolution of our recent history, both from a temporary approach, and from the perspective of the war conflicts that most affected the civilian population. As background, the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Guernica’s bombing.


The main piece of the exhibition is a video-installation entitled “El rayo que no cesa”. Cristina offers a representation of the air bombings that took place from 1912 onwards and that caused civilian victims. This creation is still on construction, fed by the contributions of the participants of the workshop Madrid 45, that the artist offered in Abril within the Visual Arts Program of the Comunidad de Madrid.
 

 

 

 

Cristina Lucas. "2 Piper Prometeo, 2013". Video.

 

 

A rich program of free activities to all public joins the exhibition, from guided tours, and inter-generational workshops, to lectures with specialists… among which they must be highlighted the talks with the curator of the exhibition, Gerardo Mosquea, and the artist herself, where they will share first hand their views upon the show (until the 5th of November).

 


ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26


Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.


PERFORMANCE: OSCURECER UN PAPEL. BY ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

March 5 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.


Nocturnality. Installation. Rocío Valdivieso..


Oscurecer un papel forms part of a series of actions in which the artist engages in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. Within this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is transformed when spoken aloud, assuming a different form in the act of articulation. The texts stem from an ongoing investigation into materiality, space, the relationships between body and matter, writing, the sculptural, and a sustained interest in the exploration of voice and orality.

The material from which Oscurecer un papel is constructed consists of a collection of purchase receipts the artist has been accumulating over time. The printed text they contain, together with the action of bringing them into proximity with a heat source—thereby activating the thermal paper on which they are produced—generates meanings that revolve around the notions of consumption and wear.


Rocío Valdivieso. Latent Aura. Performance documentation.


ABOUT ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an MA in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) and a BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. She was a Fundación Carolina fellow from 2022 to 2023. She currently co-directs Errática. Laboratory of Processes and Critique in Madrid, alongside Romina Casile.

She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at the Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and in 2020 participated in the Intensive Curatorial Program of Proyecto PAC at Galería Gachi Prieto, Buenos Aires. She received the Visual Arts Promotion Award at the 4th Visual Arts Week of the Ente Cultural de Tucumán. She was awarded an AUGM scholarship for an exchange residency at UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. She also participated in the International Residency Program La Ira de Dios and in the Acéfala Galería Residency for Argentine artists.