Although the main desire of Art Madrid is the promotion of Spanish contemporary art, it is true that the fair has become the favorite setting for many foreign galleries to show their proposals. And they come from Germany, France, China, Mexico or Ukraine. To all of them, thanks for the trust.

Veronika Veit

Survivertrophy, 2015

Plastic, fabric, paper and acrylic

57 x 25cm

The Schmalfuss gallery (Berlin, Germany) is one of the veterans of Art Madrid, a fair in which it has already participated eight times. Originally founded in Marburg in 1998 and with a second location in Berlin since 2011, it is directed by Michael W. Schmalfuß and Liane von Plessen who have brought to our fair the influences of northern Europe linked to its most characteristic lines, realism, figurative painting and sculpture. Schmalfuss gallery represents artists whose work, through individual expression, is an example of the artistic transition from the 20th to the 21st century, building bridges towards the future. In Art Madrid'18 they participate with the work of Oliver Czarnetta, Jürgen Paas, Willi Siber, Luzia Simons and Veronika Veit.

Luzia Simons

Stockage 83- 3/5, 2010

Scanogram

180 x 126cm

We highlight among them Luzia Simons, dedicated to the construction of images through photography and video as well as performance and installations. More than a decade ago she began to use the scanner as a working tool and she developed her own mode of production with which she achieved the representation of the object with a lot of detail and sharpness, almost getting to dissect the poetics of the forms.

Rusudan Khizanishvili

Temperance, 2017

Acrylic on canvas

130 x 100cm

Another of the galleries that works on Art Madrid for years is the Parisian Norty (Carrières-sur-Seine, France), directed by Dominique Guerin. And it is a very pleasant surprise because his style, heartbreaking and raw, has always been one of the most risky at the fair and, nevertheless, it has seduced collectors, being one of the obligatory stops for connoisseurs. The Norty gallery was founded in 2013 and represents emerging artists, mainly painters, selected for their committed and risky work, dedicating itself enthusiastically to its international projection. Norty promotes a new vision about the art world, proposing Expressionism and Art Brut as a new artistic line. On this occasion they present the recent work of Rusudan Khizanishvili, L'homme Jaune, Adlane Samet, Carmen Selma and Pierre Sgamma.

On other occasions we have highlighted the work of the Spanish Carmen Selma, so this time we will talk about another woman, Rusudan Khizanishvil, a young artist who works in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. With influences from great artists such as Gauguin and Cézanne, the work of Khizanishvili visibly recognizes the history of painting and the works of the great masters. Her brilliant use of color, combined with a palpable and sensual handling of oil painting, demonstrates her enormous pictorial maturity. "The canvas - explains the artist- is a way of escape or connection with the world of my imagination. I see the canvas as a door. I create interdimensional portals in my painting, and I use the image of animals as a symbolic key between cultures, nations and identities. My animals are a reflection of past life to the present."

Daniel R. Collazo

De la serie Cartas a la Luna, 2017

Charcoal on canvas

160 x 132cm

Daniel R. Collazo

De la serie Dibujos Fotogénicos, 2017

Charcoal on canvas

230 x 160cm

From Cuba, the Collage Habana Gallery (Havana, Cuba) visits us for the 8th year. Directed by Eduardo Pupo Laffita, Collage Habana is the gallery that leads the promotion and commercialization of the Visual Arts within the Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets. Through the network of galleries that operate under its direction, it brings together a diverse group of creators, from national awards such as Manuel Mendive and Roberto Fabelo, to novel artists who win each year the Post-it contest, designed for emerging creators. In this sense, they are responsible for the diffusion of the aesthetic plurality of Cuban art.

For this edition of Art Madrid the gallery has decided to bet on the work of three young artists: Roldán Lauzán Eiras, Andy Llanes Bultó and Daniel R. Collazo. Their works share technical skill in the treatment of drawing and painting, and even though they are different from each other, they coexist harmonically in the same space. We stayed this time with the spectacular charcoals of Daniel Rodríguez Collazo, city and country landscapes, unstructured as a kaleidoscope in grayscale.

Guim Tió Zarraluki

Cavall Blanc, 2017

Oil on linen

89 x 116cm

Guim Tió Zarraluki

Hamaca, 2017

Oil on linen

27 x 35cm

Yiri Arts (Taipei, Taiwan), with Orton Huang as director, was founded in 2014 with the spirit of creating a "Museum of everyday art" for art to enter and enrich the lives of people. Through curating, exhibitions, publications and attendance at international art fairs, the gallery presents inspiring works full of vitality. They have 3 locations but, in addition, it has four multidisciplinary venues in Taipei that combine art, books and gastronomy. At Art Madrid, they participate with the work of Taiwanese artist Lai Wei-Yu and one of our favorite artists, the Catalan Guim Tió Zarraluki.

Guim treats human beings with humor, irony and a strong degree of provocation, reflection of a society full of taboos and subjected to the visual tyranny of television, advertising and of course, fashion magazines. From his intervened portraits, stained and veiled, he now moves to almost empty landscapes, huge plains of pure color in which the human figure is a milestone due to its absolute presence and concomitant fragility.

Venske & Spänle

Schnoepp, 2017

Marble

33 x 19cm

Venske & Spänle

Palermo, 2016

Marble

35 x 27cm

This group of galleries are joined this year witn newcomers such as the German gallery Robert Drees (Hannover), currently the most important contemporary art gallery in the state capital of North Germany. Robert Dress is located in an impressive industrial space of more than 300 square meters and its program is oriented towards artists already established in the international art market and emerging talents, to which they dedicate collective exhibitions that connect classical media such as painting and sculpture with photography, video and installation art. In Art Madrid'18 they present works by Sabine Dehnel, Mikael Fagerlund, Jürgen Jansen, Pepa Salas Vilar and Venske & Spänle.

To the Spanish Pepa Salas, to her almost monochromatic scenes, apparently innocent between realism and surreal fiction, we have already referred to on other occasions (outstanding projects of Art Madrid'18) so we will now highlight Venske & Spänle, artists duo formed by Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle, known for their Smörfs, sculptures made of marble capable of transmitting movement and life. The material adopts light shapes and appears malleable and soft, light and fluid. Venske and Spänle have held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Spain, the United States and Denmark.

Andrei Zadorine

North wind, 2016

Watercolour on paper

63 x 95cm

Andrei Zadorine

Daughter, 2013

Oil on canvas

120 x 180cm

Nebo Art Gallery, from Kyiv, Ukraine, is directed by Valeriia Ivanova and represents artists from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United States. It has become a platform for independent projects in two branches, NEBO BOOKLAB PUBLISHING, a publisher specialized in fiction for children, poetry collections and books on art; and NEBO ART SCHOOL, an educational project that brings together painting classes, workshops and excursions in various areas of art. It is one of the most personal proposals of this year's fair, with the painter Andrei Zadorine and his almost photographic paintings in homage to the Spanish filmaker Victor Erice, an exotic and poetic combination.

Linet Sánchez

Sin titulo, 2012-2014

Digital print

100 x 150cm

Linet Sánchez

Sin titulo, 2012-2014

Digital print

150 x 80cm

With venues in Cancun (Mexico) and in Havana (Cuba), Alterna Studio gallery is oriented to the support, dissemination and promotion of recently graduated Cuban emerging artists. In Art Madrid we will see the proposal of Carla Maria Bellido de Luna, Linet Sánchez and Yoxi Velázquez, 3 women whose work in different disciplines (photography, sculpture, installation ...) is characterized by the power of their images and their questioning of the status quo. In her painting, Carla María Bellido reflects on concepts such as subjectivity, truthfulness or imagination and wonders what builds us and what precedes us as creators. Yoxi Velázquez uses resin in his human and animal figures to generate questions about injustice, cruelty or abuse. Some of her art pieces for Art Madrid are a collaboration with the artist David Madruga. Linet Sánchez, on the other hand, presents empty and rarefied spaces, models where human presence is felt but not visualized and where only loneliness, isolation and introspection inhabit.

We will dedicate a separate chapter to the galleries that have come from Portugal, to which we have been paying special attention in Art Madrid for years. In Art Madrid'18 we will count on visit the Art Lounge and Art Peripheral galleries, both in Lisbon, and Paulo Nunes Arte Contemporânea, in Vila Franca de Xira. Within the One Project Program, Art Madrid will have the participation of the Portuguese gallery Nuno Sacramento, of Ílhavo, who participates for the second consecutive year in the fair. The foreign representation ends up with the Brazilian RV Cultura e Arte, of Rio de Janeiro and Pantocrator Gallery, based in Suzhou, China.

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.

In this sense, the invited artists will construct micro-scenarios in which gestures, postures, and bodily movements function as performative “fronts,” shaping the framework of perception and meaning for the audience. These actions dramatize everyday experience, offering idealized or heightened interpretations of the relationship between body, space, and temporality, while certain elements — invisible effort, internal tensions, contradictions — remain partially concealed, generating deeper layers of meaning and resonance.

In line with Goffman, performance operates within the tension between idealized representation and real effort, between what is visible and what remains silent. The artists manage the information they convey, selecting what is shown and what is concealed, articulating strategies of presence that may reveal or disguise power, vulnerability, resistance, or intimacy. In this context, idealization implies the construction of a performative language capable of foregrounding values, tensions, and relational possibilities, exposing the poetic density of the everyday and, if one wishes, breaking the barrier of opacity that shapes our behavior in “real” daily life.

Although the series focuses on the notions of body ↔ memory ↔ representation ↔ presence, it seeks to expand its horizon, conceiving performance as an act that reveals invisible bonds and tensions traversing bodies, objects, and contexts. Within this network of walls, stands, and corridors, parallels emerge as the Galería de Cristal becomes a mirror of aesthetic experiences: a space beyond the strictly artistic sphere temporarily inhabited by the ephemeral presence of contemporary art, as occurs within the context of the fair.

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.

INVITED ARTISTS

COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA (Málaga, 2024)

La Burra Negra is a nomadic Action Art collective based in Málaga, founded in 2024 following its first residency in Totalán. It is self-managed by Ascensión Soto Fernández, Gabriela Feldman de la Rocha, Sasha Camila Falcke, Sara Gema Domínguez Castillo, Sofía Barco Sánchez, and Regina Lagos González, six creators from diverse backgrounds who met at the Hospital de Artistas of La Juan Gallery.

The collective brings together professionals from jewelry, painting, performing arts, music, dance, cultural mediation, and cultural management. Its activities include an annual residency in Totalán, the production of performative works, cultural mediation, and site-specific interventions. Since its creation, it has participated in the Periscopio Conference at La Térmica, presented A granel at the MVA in Málaga, carried out various actions in Totalán — most recently during its second annual residency — and taken part with its own proposals in Roger Bernat’s performance Desplazamiento del Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid.

Colectivo La Burra Negra presents at Art Madrid’26 its performance: ALTA FACTURA

The project forms part of a performative investigation that questions exhibition frameworks and the hierarchies of value that shape artistic creation. Through textile language and the body as a surface of inscription, the collective examines the tension between process and result, craft and spectacle, focusing on what the cultural system tends to conceal: invested time, wear, fragility, and the manual labor that sustains every work. Within this framework, the fashion runway appears as a symbolic structure condensing brilliance, consumption, and final product, becoming the point of departure for its subversion.

In this context, Alta Factura shifts attention to the seams — both literal and metaphorical — that usually remain in the shadows backstage. Through conceptual textile pieces, the performance exposes the rigor of craft and the artist’s vulnerability, transforming the runway into a critical space where process becomes the protagonist. By making visible the joints, adjustments, and traces of making, the work reclaims the value of the invisible and confronts the viewer with the material and affective conditions that sustain contemporary artistic practice.

ROCÍO VALDIVIESO (Tucumán, Argentina, 1994)

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid and holds a Master’s degree in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán and was a Fundación Carolina fellow between 2022 and 2023.

She currently coordinates Errática Laboratorio de procesos and Clínica de obra, alongside Romina Casile, in Madrid. She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at Matadero Madrid’s Center for Artistic Residencies, mentored by Dora García, Cabello/Carceller, and Isabel Marcos. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Among her solo exhibitions are El orden de las virtudes (2022), Pintura plegaria (2021), and Teoría de lo involuntario (2019) in Tucumán, Argentina. She has participated in group exhibitions including Aura latente at Espacio Amazonas, the closing event of the PEEPA Program at Matadero Madrid, and Ceder una huella in Cuenca, Spain. Since 2013, she has participated in various educational programs and frequently writes texts accompanying art exhibitions. She is a founding member and former secretary of the board of the Association of Visual Arts Workers of Tucumán (TAViT).

Rocío Valdivieso presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OSCURECER UN PAPEL

Oscurecer un papel is part of a series of actions in which reading is constructed through repetition, memorization, and a degree of improvisation. A non-linear reading emerges from a written text that transforms when spoken aloud, shifting its form and meaning in the very act of utterance. The texts stem from research into materiality, space, and the relationships between body and matter, as well as writing, sculpture, and the exploration of voice and orality.

The material used to construct the piece consists of purchase receipts accumulated over time. The printed text on them, together with the act of bringing them close to a heat source — triggering the reaction of thermal paper — generates meanings linked to consumption, record-keeping, and wear.

AMANDA GATTI (Porto Alegre, Brasil, 1996)

Amanda Gatti is an artist and researcher whose practice unfolds across performance, video, photography, and installation. She explores the intersections between body, object, and space, investigating how we occupy — and are occupied by — the spaces that surround us. Drawing from experiences of displacement and observations of domestic and urban environments, her work conceives the body as mediator and archive, transforming found objects, spatial arrangements, and everyday gestures into ephemeral architectures and relational situations.

She completed a Master’s in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture at Museo Reina Sofía/UCLM (Spain, 2023) and holds a degree in Audiovisual Production from PUCRS (Brazil, 2018). Her work has been presented at institutions and contexts such as Museo Reina Sofía, Fundación Antonio Pérez, Galería Nueva, CRUCE, and Teatro Pradillo, as well as in exhibitions and festivals in Brazil, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She currently resides in Madrid, with secondary bases in Brazil and the United Kingdom.

Amanda Gatti presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: TRAYECTORIA

This performance continues the artist’s long-term research with objects found in public space: obsolete fragments, remnants of everyday use, and discarded materials that, once painted blue, acquire renewed visibility and an autonomous sculptural condition. These materials form an archive activated through gesture and displacement.

In Trayectoria, the artist proposes to traverse the fair’s main corridor while dragging a large group of these objects, linked together and tied to her shoelaces. The journey transforms this transit area into an active space in which body and materials generate new forms. The objects function as extensions of the moving body: they tense, divert, slow down, and reconfigure each step. The action explores the coexistence between the durable and the ephemeral, between what has been discarded and what insists on remaining. It approaches transit as the simultaneous activation of the material and immaterial, proposing an encounter between gesture, the sculptural, and all that continues to accompany us even after having been left behind.

JIMENA TERCERO (Madrid, 1998)

Jimena Tercero is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice — developed through video, performance, and painting — investigates the limits of identity in relation to the human body. Her work explores concepts such as memory, tangibility, and play, delving into subconscious pain inscribed in bodily memory.

She trained in painting with Lola Albín and in analog photography in Cambridge (2014). Between 2018 and 2020, she specialized in audiovisual practice, training as a filmmaker alongside figures such as director Víctor Erice and the production company El Deseo. She later completed a Master’s in Creative Direction at ELISAVA and developed her performative practice at La Juan Gallery.

She directed works such as Private (2016) and Paranoid (2021), presented at Galería Aspa Contemporary. She continued this line of inquiry in Yo mi me conmigo (2023), presented at Teatros del Canal; Inside Voices (2021), filmed at Conde Duque with the guidance of Itziar Okariz; and La última regla at La Juan Gallery. In 2026, she premieres the documentary Contando Ovejas, a portrait of two shepherds in Majadahonda reflecting on rural memory and its relationship with territory and time.

Jimena Tercero presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OFF LINE

OFF LINE is a performative piece that reflects on how the digital era is transforming the body’s relationship with the world and with others. Interaction is increasingly constructed through screens and interfaces, and identity shifts toward the virtual, subordinating physical experience to digital representation. In this context, the body becomes fragile: it loses density, memory, and active presence, becoming a support for information or image.

Hyperconnectivity and fragmented attention generate an increasingly inert corporeality, characterized by reduced spontaneous movement and diminished direct sensory interaction. This raises fundamental questions: how is presence redefined when our relationship with the world depends on technological mediation? What will happen to bodily experience in a future in which virtuality predominates over the physical?

There is a risk of progressive bodily passivity: bodies that remain still, whose activity is determined by devices, and whose memory is externalized into digital records. The fragmentation of physical experience and the primacy of technological representation create a scenario in which the body, although visible, is displaced from its original function as an agent of perception and action. This conceptual framework invites reflection on how digitalization affects corporeality, memory, and social relations, as well as on the vulnerability and inertia that traverse bodies in increasingly technologized environments.

PERFORMANCES:

Wednesday, March 4 | 7:00 PM — Colectivo La Burra Negra. Performance: Alta Factura

Thursday, March 5 | 7:00 PM — Rocío Valdivieso. Performance: Oscurecer un papel

Friday, March 6 | 7:00 PM — Amanda Gatti. Performance: Trayectoria

Saturday, March 7 | 7:00 PM — Jimena Tercero. Performance: OFF LINE

Art Madrid celebrates its twenty-first edition, consolidating itself as a platform for visibility and dialogue for national and international galleries and artists during Madrid Art Week. In this context, the fair renews its commitment to experimentation and to the inclusion of artistic practices that challenge conventional art market formats. The integration of the Performance Cycle — now in its third edition — reflects this institutional commitment to generating a space that fosters the production of live artistic experiences.

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles, the fair’s venue, thus becomes an ideal environment in which architecture and the event’s own dynamics enhance the ephemeral and relational character of performance.

With this initiative, Art Madrid reaffirms its role as an active agent in the construction of a plural artistic ecosystem, committed to presence, research, and dialogue as fundamental axes of contemporary art.