Art Madrid'26 – SPECTRAL IMAGES AND URBAN FRENZY IN THE WORK OF EAMONN DOYLE

In our diverse and full of possibilities world, it is not surprising that artists explore different disciplines and jump from one speciality to another depending on the language that best suits their expressive needs at all times. This has been the story of Eamonn Doyle, to whom the Mapfre Foundation dedicates an exhibition that includes the highlights of his short but brilliant career as a photographer.

Eamonn Doyle, ON (series) nº 1, 2014 © Eamonn Doyle, courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

Eamonn Doyle began his career in the art world with painting studies and later on photography, between 1987 and 1991. However, after some initial trips in which he tried to develop as a reporter photographer, in 1994 he left the camera and dedicated entirely to music. For twenty years he worked as an editor and music promoter, which led him to travel the world while organising festivals or recording albums. But six years ago, he decided to retake the photograph, becoming in record time one of the most recognised contemporary photographers.

His previous career, however, has an essential influence on his work. The cultural movements of the last decades, which run in parallel to music, along with his passion for literature, clearly appear in his images. In this context, his hometown, Dublin, gains a unique presence, revealing his urban life and the pulse of the new generations soaked in the socio-political context of the moment.

Eamonn Doyle, "Untitled 28", 2013, © Eamonn Doyle, courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

One of his best-known works is the "Dublin trilogy", with the series i, ON and End. To these is added another famous project: K, focused on spectral images that the photographer took in Ireland and Spain. His work characterises by urban ambience in edged frames that force the viewer's point of view. The absence of straight cuts, the abundance of angles and perspective cuts convey a constant sense of activity and movement.

That same movement is present in the K series, where the wind appears to stir the tissues and hide the figures. This concealment game catches the characters with enveloping movements, which also generate confusion and anguish. There is a particular surreal message in these images, with faceless anthropomorphic forms on inert backgrounds of sharp contrast.

Eamonn Doyle, “K-20”, 2017

Likewise, we must highlight the constant presence of music in the photographer's work. The exhibition in the Sala Bárbara de Braganza also holds a video piece entitled “Made in Dublin”, in which sound plays an important role. Doyle has continued to collaborate regularly with composer David Donohoe, whose pieces are an integral part of many of his works such as the K series or his video creations.

Bárbara de Braganza Room (Mapfre Foundation): from September 12th to January 26th.

 


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.