It's happened again! Latin American art will shine in the next edition of Art Madrid with the presence of more than twenty artists represented by national and international galleries as part of the General Galleries Program of Art Madrid'24.

For our next edition, we will have the presence of Juvenal Ravelo, (Monagas, Caripito, Venezuela, 1934) and we want to share with you how fortunate we feel to have one of the greatest exponents of kinetic art in Latin America.

The artist Juvenal Ravelo, winner of the National Culture Prize in the Plastic Arts category (Venezuela 2008), has been invited to exhibit in the Venezuelan pavilion at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, to be celebrated from April 20 to November 24, 2024, under the premise: Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand).

Juvenal Ravelo. Fragmentación de la luz y el color. Acrílicos ensamblados, aluminio y cristales reflectantes, 50 x 50 cm, 2023.

Juvenal Ravelo is one of the most prestigious Latin American artists of his time, a master of kinetic art, a pioneer in thinking about the social impact of art in the community, and one of the references of participatory art in the region. And he will be with us at Art Madrid'24, represented by Kleur Gallery. Based in Santiago de Chile and directed by Mauricio Ceballos since its creation in 2014, Kleur Gallery specializes in bringing together artists of different generations who work in the field of abstraction.The gallery's proposal at Art Madrid stands out for the unquestionable beauty and the infinity of physical-spatial possibilities that the new trends take from the genesis of kinetic art, promoting a dialogue between tradition and renovation, under the spectrum of those transformable realities bequeathed by the kinetic movement that emerged in Paris in the mid-twentieth century.

From Europe to Latin America, the current of abstraction has left us masters such as Carlos Cruz Diez, Gego, Carmen Herrera, Jesús Rafael Soto or Julio Le Parc. But the influence of the kinetic movement was more than unidirectional, as Latin American artists moved to other contexts and realities, immersing themselves in the principles of an art form that was permeated with changes in the _perception of real time. _This was the case with Juvenal Ravelo, who decided to go to France in 1964 to study the principles of Kineticism and Constructivism and to delve into the facets of the sociology of art.

Juvenal Ravelo. Fragmentación de la luz y el color. Acrílicos ensamblados, aluminio y cristales reflectantes, 50 x 50 x 3 cm, 2023.

Juvenal Ravelo has lived in Paris for more than thirty years, during which time he has periodically visited his native Venezuela. He has carried out participatory initiatives to bring creation to the streets and to educate citizens, a kind of sensitivity that would make him an active spectator. The integration of the community into the artistic fact, the development of projects aimed at involving the viewer as a participant in the creation of works subject to movement and the perception of visual rhythms, are intertwined to accommodate the symbolic value of a proposal dedicated to social issues. In this way, his initiatives aimed at creating works in the public space have given form to an operation that has made the _Art of participation in the street _one of the most recognizable signs of his artistic trajectory.

Another of his most relevant projects is the "Open Air Museum", which he initiated in his community of Caripito and with which he opened the doors to his well-known Módulos Cromáticos. Once again, the artist echoed the social will of art to involve his fellow citizens in the creation of a project for the community. Participation and play are irrevocably implicit in Juvenal Ravelo's kinetic work.

Juvenal Ravelo. Imagen cortesía Galería Kleur.

The colors, lines and shapes, which as a whole create a reality full of visual rhythms, are presented to the spectator as a capricious game. In most cases, it is up to the spectator, as an agent of change, to activate the process of creation and reception of the work. The works and questions raised by Juvenal Ravelo propose a change in the relationship between people and artistic objects, leaving the orphan the possibility of completing a work without the presence of its interlocutor, promoting a way of creating characterized by portability and playful and participatory components.

Juvenal Ravelo. Fragmentación de la luz y el color. Acrílicos ensamblados, aluminio y cristales reflectantes, 100 x 100 x 3 cm, 2023.

The research, the phenomena of visualization of the artistic object, the processes of fragmentation of light in his works, and his concern to teach the public the vital importance of their presence in activating the work of art, make Juvenal Ravelo one of the pioneers of Venezuelan kinetic art and a timeless artist, capable of identifying and redeeming in his art the problems of each time.

Alexander Grahovsky

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARISOL SALANOVA. INTERVIEW PROGRAM. ART MADRID’25

Alexander Grahovsky (Alicante, 1980) begins with a chaotic or random process, similar to collecting images and creating collages from scenes that capture his interest, which he can then recreate as he pleases. His works explore themes such as the unknown, death, and animals, often drawing parallels with toys and incorporating recurring characters along with elements like floating stones. Narrative plays a crucial role in his paintings; the surrealist aspect emerges from the way he constructs a non-linear story. Scenes overlap, appear in different phases across various sections of each painting, and invite the viewer’s eye to roam through the composition. His work contains references to classical painting and cinema, making its interpretation dependent on the viewer's personal background and emotional state. The central thread of his art conveys that, despite life’s hardships, we all continue to celebrate in some way.

The Lighthouse at the End of the Ocean. 2024. Mixed media. 190 x 140 cm.

What role does experimentation play in your creative process?

Experimentation plays a fundamental role in my entire creative process on two levels: technical and narrative. On a technical level, because I allow myself a range of liberties or aesthetic whims that turn the act of painting itself into a game—something enjoyable where, in a way, anything is possible. On a narrative level, it’s about how I build stories, as there is no script or main idea holding everything together. Instead, starting from a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, I try to construct a story that intertwines, compelling the viewer, in some sense, to contribute their own interpretation or create their own narrative.

What are your references?

My influences range from classical painting, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or The Ghent Altarpiece, to more contemporary artists like Hurvin Anderson and Dominique Fung, including Hopper, Hockney, and Leonora Carrington, among countless others. All these artistic influences blend with others from cinema, including the films of Parajanov and the director of Midsommar. Particularly, Midsommar has been quite influential in my work for its distinctive aesthetic. Additionally, the world of comics plays a role, particularly the work of Moebius, especially his more surrealist science fiction illustrations. Video games are another source of inspiration, especially in how scenes are depicted—everything is flattened, as if it were a screen or the backdrop of a theater stage, reminiscent of mid-to-late-90s graphic adventure games.

A Brief Story of an Embrace. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 33 x 41 cm.

How do you create the distinct—and sometimes recurring—characters in your paintings?

The characters develop as the body of work evolves, as if each painting were part of a larger story yet to be told. As I began working in this style, I noticed that many of them reappeared, and when I reused them or made them part of new pieces, I was already considering what I had previously painted about them, as well as what had happened to them in other works. For example, Death has transformed from being a skeleton that might seem to bring bad news into a somewhat mocking or humorous figure wearing a party hat. We also find the Devil, the Magician, and the Red House, which serves as a refuge or a pilgrimage site where characters often end up—or could end up. Then there’s the Black Cat, which initially appeared simply as a warning symbol, as if telling the other characters to stay alert to what’s happening around them, but later became a kind of measure of time: in larger pieces, it typically appears three times. I enjoy playing with the ambiguity of whether it’s three different cats or the same cat appearing at three different points in the story. In this way, the characters help weave a narrative and create connections between all the pieces, forming a shared universe to which they all belong.

The Crow, the Stag, the Grapes, and the Wine I Spilled. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 60 x 74 cm.

When did you transition to the garden series, and why?

In 2022, I decided to gather all the surreal scenes and sketches that were scattered around my studio and explore what would happen if they coexisted in the same space—what would happen if all these seemingly disconnected elements were placed on the same plane. In this case, the plane is the canvas, and the setting is the garden. It’s here that the garden, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and all the imagery rooted in our collective unconscious become visible. From that point, I chose to keep pulling the thread of this story to see where it would lead me. This is when all the characters begin to emerge, allowing me to create a space where I can play and find creative freedom that I hadn’t experienced in my previous work.

You Should Break My Heart in January 2024. Oil, spray paint, and colored pencils on canvas. 81 x 100 cm.

What connection does this phase of your work have with your past in the world of comics?

This phase of my work draws a lot from all the years I spent reading comics, from when I was a young child to trying to break into the American comic industry. I was close, so close, but it didn’t materialize. The truth is that, in the end, what interested me more than the drawing itself were the more experimental narratives, like those of John Hankiewicz, Dave McKean, or people of that kind. In that sense, I’m mainly influenced by the way stories are constructed. They are not sequential panels where A leads to B, and B leads to C. Rather, the visual journey through the pieces is like a comic page where you can jump from the first panel to the seventh and then return to the second, and depending on the order you choose, the story will unfold in one way or another. It’s true that, for example, what you often find are different fragments of the same scene: a beginning, a middle, a climax, and a resolution, but they are often surrounded by other scenes that either influence the events in each smaller scene or simply coexist in the same universe. In that sense, I’m also very interested in the idea of a shared universe, right? That all these pieces, this entire body of work, form part of a larger story that seems to want to tell itself, one that still doesn’t know where it’s going but is starting to find its place and path. Like the characters that started simply appearing and now each one has its own backstory.

Con la colaboración de