Art Madrid'26 – INTERVIEW WITH LUIS MIGUEL RICO

Luis Miguel Rico

“My workshop is full of materials that are familiar to all of us due to their use in the field of Fine Arts, among which I highlight papers that I dye previously for later manipulation. All of them, appear randomly on my work table, add to my problems of composition, which I try to solve directly on the support of the work.

In this act of composing, for me it is essential that those materials that I use and arrange on the surface, connect and come to have a unitary meaning, giving rise during the creative process to the non-renunciation of my work as a playful way for the creation and production of my works. Parallel to my collage work, I present a series of works where I exclusively use the medium of painting. With them, I generate a series of forms, which maintain a certain link with my collage structures. I use spots of broken colors and other more saturated colors where the density of the paint, more or less liquid, also plays an important role”

These stain structures are simple in outline and try to have a spatial sense close to the work that I create with my work on paper; superposition of planes, whose form is integrated on top of the previous one, or not, allowing the viewer to understand the different work processes that the creation of each of the works goes through.

Luis Miguel Rico

ST, 2022

Oleo sobre lienzo

150 x 114cm

Interview:

What inspires you when you create?

When I create, I am inspired by any element that gives me strength in color, for example a sunset, a walk along the seashore or nature itself. When the whole issue of confinement happened to us, I was out in the street again, I am lucky to live near the countryside and I saw the blooming of spring, that strength, those colors, the shapes that reached me much more.


¿En qué has estado trabajando recientemente?

Recientemente he estado trabajando en composiciones partiendo de la base del collage, que son abstracciones geométricas, siempre ligadas un poco a la naturaleza y a la forma orgánica, y sobre todo la superposiciones de planos, unos más quebrados otros más saturados, buscando siempre la composición armónica.

Luis Miguel Rico

Sin título, 2021

Oil on canvas

150 x 120cm

What have you been working on recently?

Recently I have been working on compositions based on collage, which are geometric abstractions, always linked to nature and organic form, and especially the overlapping of planes, some more broken, others more saturated, always looking for a harmonious composition.


What do you expect from your participation in Art Madrid?

From my participation in Art Madrid I hope to make myself known to a wider and more specialized public, deal with other artists and generate some kind of synergy with them, maybe some collaboration and enjoy the experience.

Luis Miguel Rico

ST, 2022

Oleo sobre lienzo

150 x 120cm

How did you come to this type of work?

Through experimenting with different materials and supports, ideas came up, sometimes I put them aside and other times I took them as good, and other times what I had discarded at the end have come back again and I'm applying it again.


What do you intend to convey with your work?

When I see a work of art I feel a lot of emotion, in the end the good thing about the artist is that he is able to transfer the emotion to a pictorial work, or whatever it is. So from my humble state, I try to transmit part of what I feel, when creating a work, to the viewer.


Luis Miguel Rico participates at Art Madrid with Gärna Gallery, alongside with Fernando de Ana, Hayden Rearik, Lucia Gorostegui y Lars Zech



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.