Art Madrid'23 – INTIMATE SPACES. PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Within the online exhibition “Intimate spaces. Personal reflections” eight artists whose works are connected by the search of the intimate space live together. The images by Xurxo Gómez-Chao, Alfonso Zubiaga, Carlos Regueira, Soledad Córdoba, Rocío Verdejo, Andy Sotiriou, Ely Sánchez and José Quintanilla capture serene and solitary settings, empty spaces, open-plan rooms with which they invite personal reflection. The selection of images in this exhibition assembles around two areas: that of interior spaces and that of natural landscapes.

The individual is immersed in an everyday whirl leading him to a vital dilemma. A large part of our decisions is the fruit of the evolution of things, the imposition of standardised guidelines that surround us with routines of modernity, in the stream of the society of our time. However, the need to recover the essence of the human being is often imposed on this inertia. The return to spirituality, to inner balance, demands its place.

With the series "La Salita" the photographer Xurxo Gómez-Chao manages to give soul to walls and spaces in which the only outstanding element is an armchair. This way, he creates dreamlike environments within those interior landscapes where the absence of any other element confers a more intangible meaning.

Xurxo Gómez-Chao

Hotel Earle. Red room, 2016

Photography on paper Ilford

100 x 80cm

Xurxo Gómez-Chao

Hotel Earle. Golden room, 2016

Photography on paper Ilford

75 x 60cm

For her part, the lyrical scenarios of the series "Limbo" by Soledad Córdoba start from experienced and dreamy realities. Her images create visual poems, where silence, beauty, pain, fear or lack of communication are present and united by a fragile thread. Rocío Verdejo, likewise Soledad, introduces human figures in her compositions to unravel that tangle of feelings and emotions that gender violence implies. Her work "Crashroom" is a visual metaphor that manages to express the "not to exist inside".

Rocío Verdejo

Crashroom, 2014

Printing with pigmented inks on Hahnemühle paper on dibond

70 x 50cm

Natural environments also offer a multitude of possibilities to show those sensations even if there are no walls, no borders, no limitations. We find naked landscapes that manage to convey a deep balance like those by Andy Sotiriou, whose series "Snowscapes" captures snow-covered fields crossed by random lines of vegetation, or Alfonso Zubiaga, who interprets the relationship between the land and the sea with images of high-contrast and great serenity in his work "Binario". In this same way, José Quintanilla also uses cultivated fields in which, suddenly, an anonymous and washed-out construction emerges. His project "My house, my tree" conveys a deep nostalgia with retro aesthetic photographs and ochre-pastel tones.

Andy Sotiriou

Snowscape 29, 2014

Photography, mineral pigments on paper

60 x 60cm

Alfonso Zubiaga

Binario 1, 2017

Photography

55 x 74cm

José Quintanilla

Mi casa, mi árbol 15, 2015

Pigmented inks on Hahnemühle cotton paper mounted on cardboard museum

21 x 31cm

From a more dreamlike perspective, Carlos Regueira offers a dramatic vision of wooded landscapes. His "Paisajes pervertidos" reflect a morbid beauty, perhaps threatening, but at the same time reveals formal serenity and balance. These images emerge from the mist of memory and interpellate the viewer. In a similar line evolves the work of Ely Sánchez. In his series "Heridos" seeks to reveal that everything we see is an artifice, a translated image, credible but not real. On the other hand, in "Sueños geométricos" the artist focuses on the beauty of the lucid dream to experience what in real life is not feasible, thus releasing his most intimate identity.

Carlos Regueira

Malaysia, 2014

Photography

52 x 70cm

Ely Sánchez

Serie Heridos 1, 2014

Digital print

53 x 80cm

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In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.