Art has its own value in each area or attribute that makes up its full meaning: it has cultural value, aesthetic value, historical value, personal value, emotional value and economic value.

Art collecting is a polyhedral practice that includes all these attributes in its final praxis. Despite the economic value that art has by itself, depending on fixed and known elements, it also depends on subjective and ephemeral values, on the sensations transmitted to the buyer, on the look that is deposited on a piece and the link that arises with it. In analogy, we could say that the acquisition of an artwork is the beginning of a committed relationship that occupies space, a time and an emotion inhabiting with its existence a concrete place.

Miguel Vallinas

Suppe n 29, 2019

Photography

70 x 70cm

According to Claude Lévi-Strauss "this avid and ambitious desire to take possession of the object for the benefit of the owner, or even the spectator, constitutes one of the most original features of the art of Occidental civilization" (Mythologies, 1971). This idea put forward by the French anthropologist makes us reflect on ownership in art, on how the contemporary subject looks at objects and how this impulse of ownership is also developed from capitalism. This ostentation of property goes back especially to the Renaissance when artistic images were not only instruments of knowledge but also of possession, wealth and political advertising. Today it is still a contemporary scene, art collecting has a clear economic value that is developed in investment and personal appropriation as an indication of social status, but despite this, we cannot forget that there exists and is very relevant, the passionate collecting, an enthusiastic look that moves away from an exclusively economic materialization.

Carlos Tárdez

Fakir, 2018

Resina policromada y cuerda

10.5 x 9.5cm

Onay Rosquet

Tuesday, 2018

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

Several reports in the recent years, such as the one produced in 2017 by the La Caixa Foundation on The Spanish Art Market, show that one of the main challenges is to find new collectors. According to this same report, 40% of purchases in the galleries came from new buyers. To get started in collecting is a complex task for which it is necessary to activate a strategy of impulse from the diverse cultural agents. Galleries, institutions, art fairs or artistic consultancies are key elements to generate a network of initiation to collecting. Likewise, we must not forget that the greatest challenge lies in creating the real possibility of including the youngest in this practice.

One of the most attractive niches in the art market for the young segment is urban art. Thanks to the cultural proximity, the closeness of the streets which this style originates and in many cases the co-ethnic nature of the artists, it is easy for the first artistic acquisitions to be triggered from here. In Art Madrid, we have artists who fit into this style, as we believe that it is unequivocally necessary for urban art to be included in fairs and exhibitions because of its intrinsic artistic value and the inclusive effect it generates on the younger generation.

Okuda San Miguel

Grey Skull, 2018

17-ink hand-printed by Inkvisible Prints on 220 g pink fabriano paper

70 x 50cm

RLM

Sísifo, 2018

Cera y grafito sobre papel

21.5 x 31.5cm

The first challenge we face is the change of mentality. Getting rid of some premises that have been so socially entrenched about who can and should be collectors. To dismantle the need for economic fortune, family tradition, specialist knowledge or social class. It is necessary to question this so assimilated structure, to eliminate labels in order to start including other social groups that are potential art collectors.

José María de Francisco y Luis Caballero, in the prologue to his exemplary text Conversations with Contemporary Art Collectors (Madrid, 2018), defines contemporary art collecting as "a phenomenon in which three forces operate that come from three ancestral domains of human desires and needs embodied in Greek mythology by the three graces of Zeus: beauty (Algae), social habit (Eufrosine) and material wealth (Talia)". We can then extract, that it is from these three forces that we must begin to build the steps to follow.

Guim Tió Zarraluki

Travesia, 2019

Oil on linen

60 x 73cm

Learning to see, to look and to contemplate. Loving beauty and expanding our knowledge of it. It is possible to educate the eye through practice, developing this social habit with visits to museums, galleries and art fairs. Thus, it is also very useful to talk to artists or experts who can advise and guide us in the learning, to be able to establish our own vision of beauty as a subjective desire but strengthening it in some bases of artistic knowledge.

Mari Quiñonero

No.86, 2018

Pastel sobre papel

27 x 21cm

PichiAvo

Perseo, 2017

Mixed media on wood

120 x 120cm

Social habit is part of the tradition where many families continue inherited collections or start collecting thanks to the educational background they have received since childhood by being regular visitors to spaces dedicated to the art exhibition. But, like almost everything, it can be trained and extended if we practice it with a certain frequency based on the desire for knowledge and visual enjoyment.

Jorg Karg

Pont Neuf, 2020

Digital print

75 x 55cm

Finally, material wealth is the most complex factor we face. We could establish a long reflection about it, finding an endless number of nuances and positions contrary to the possession of the artistic object. But assuming that we start from the idea of the passionate collector as referred before, and starting from some economic scales to be able to activate the purchase, we must also observe that it is not necessary a fortune to open up the acquiring some works of art. Starting with emerging artists but with international recognition and knowing the art market in the most independent way without getting carried away by fashions is essential when it comes to detecting good buying opportunities.

In recent years, foundations, fairs and specialised companies have begun to develop advisory programs to promote the ecosystem of contemporary art. Purchases from €600 onwards establish a whole programme of guidance and accompaniment to include new generations and social classes in collecting.

In Art Madrid we have a wide range of prices for the works on display, thus, reaffirming our commitment to attract and involve a diverse public and strengthening the role of Art Madrid as a tool for social links and education.

The practice of the collective DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) is situated at a fertile intersection between contemporary art, ecological thinking, and a philosophy of experience that shifts the emphasis from production to attention. Faced with the visual and material acceleration of the present, their work does not propose a head-on opposition, but rather a sensitive reconciliation with time, understood as lived duration rather than as a measure. The work thus emerges as an exercise in slowing down, a pedagogy of perception where contemplating and listening become modes of knowledge.

In the work of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), the territory does not function as a framework but rather as an agent. The landscape actively participates in the process, establishing a dialogical relationship reminiscent of certain eco-critical currents, in which subjectivity is decentralized and recognized as part of a broader framework. This openness implies an ethic of exposure, which is defined as the act of exposing oneself to the climate, the elements, and the unpredictable, and this means accepting vulnerability as an epistemological condition.

The materials—fabrics, pigments, and footprints—serve as surfaces for temporary inscriptions and memories, bearing the marks of time. The initial planning is conceived as an open hypothesis, allowing chance and error to act as productive forces. In this way, the artistic practice of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) articulates a poetics of care and being-with, where creating is, above all, a profound way of feeling and understanding nature.

In a historical moment marked by speed and the overproduction of images, your work seems to champion slowness and listening as forms of resistance. Could it be said that your practice proposes a way of relearning time through aesthetic experience?

Diana: Yes, but more than resistance or vindication, I would speak of reconciliation—of love. It may appear slow, but it is deliberation; it is reflection. Filling time with contemplation or listening is a way of feeling. Aesthetic experience leads us along a path of reflection on what lies outside us and what lies within.

The territory does not appear in your work as a backdrop or a setting, but as an interlocutor. How do you negotiate that conversation between the artist’s will and the voice of the place, when the landscape itself participates in the creative process?

Álvaro: For us, the landscape is like a life partner or a close friend, and naturally this intimate relationship extends into our practice. We go to visit it, to be with it, to co-create together. We engage in a dialogue that goes beyond aesthetics—conversations filled with action, contemplation, understanding, and respect.

Ultimately, in a way, the landscape expresses itself through the material. We respect all the questions it poses, while at the same time valuing what unsettles us, what shapes us, and what stimulates us within this relationship.

The Conquest of the Rabbits I & II. 2021. Process.

In your approach, one senses an ethic of exposure: exposing oneself to the environment, to the weather, to others, to the unpredictable. To what extent is this vulnerability also a form of knowledge?

Diana: For us, this vulnerability teaches us a great deal—above all, humility. When we are out there and feel the cold, the rain, or the sun, we become aware of how small and insignificant we are in comparison to the grandeur and power of nature.

So yes, we understand vulnerability as a profound source of knowledge—one that helps us, among many other things, to let go of our ego and to understand that we are only a small part of a far more complex web.

Sometimes mountains cry too. 2021. Limestone rockfall, sun, rain, wind, pine resin on acrylic on natural cotton canvas, exposed on a blanket of esparto grass and limestone for two months.. 195 cm x 130 cm x 3 cm.

Your works often emerge from prolonged processes of exposure to the environment. Could it be said that the material—the fabrics, the pigments, the traces of the environment—acts as a memory that time writes on you as much as you write on it?

Álvaro: This is a topic for a long conversation, sitting on a rock—it would be very stimulating. But if experiences shape people’s inner lives and define who we are in the present moment, then I would say yes, especially in that sense.

Leaving our comfort zone has led us to learn from the perseverance of plants and the geological calm of mountains. Through this process, we have reconciled ourselves with time, with the environment, with nature, with ourselves, and even with our own practice. Just as fabrics hold the memory of a place, we have relearned how to pay attention and how to understand. Ultimately, it is a way of deepening our capacity to feel.

The fox and his tricks. 2022. Detail.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

Diana: Our planning is limited to an initial hypothesis. We choose the materials, colours, places, and sometimes even the specific location, but we leave as much room as possible for the unexpected to occur. In the end, that is what it is really about: allowing nature to speak and life to unfold. For us, both the unexpected and mistakes are part of the world’s complexity, and within that complexity we find a form of natural beauty.