Yiri Arts, Oda Gallery, Collage Habana, O-Art Project y Lola & Unicorn Galleries

  The fourteenth edition of Art Madrid stands out for its marked international character. Actually, the origin of the participating galleries cross oceans and go far beyond the European continent. Among the foreign participating galleries from the General Program, stand out the Taiwanese Yiri Arts (Taipei), the South African ODA Gallery (Franschhoek), the Cuban Collage Havana (Havana), the Peruvian artistic collective O-Art Project (Lima) and the North American Lola & Unicorn (New York). Galleries also beyond Europe are some of the ones that partake the One Project program: Flux Zone (Mexico City, Mexico), Granada Gallery (Comuna, Argentina) and RV Cultura e Arte (Salvador, Brazil).

Chen Yun, "The past is like the dust on the plants I collected before", acrylic on canvas, 2018. Yiri Arts.

From Taiwan, they come the proposals of Yiri Arts, works as intimate as vitalist. Chen Yun, the most mysterious of the three artists presented, features some of his latest paintings: compositions organised in a format of diptychs or triptychs in which the states of the inner worlds are revealed. Both human figures, most of them in meditative attitudes, as well as the symbols or the objects that accompany them, reflect veiled narratives. In these stories, it is expressed much more without telling everything because you can feel the inherent tension that underlies in titles such as “Companion. Smeared faces comforting one another, leaning upon each other” (2017) or “The past is like the dust on the plants I collected before” (2018).

Guim Tió Zarraluki, "Campament", oil on linen, 2018. Yiri Arts.

On the other hand, the most extreme tensions are completely explicit in the works by Lai Wei-Yu, as shown his furious and monstrous figures entwined in eager fights. The contrast reappears in these works through the introduction of vivid and almost playful colours, especially in works like "The Fight" (2018) or "My Family" (2018), where a kind of confetti hides the traces of violence. Yiri closes his proposal for Art Madrid with works by Guim Tió Zarraluki: paintings of large stains of spot colours that offer us a place to stop to reflect; a new space where we can be able to cleanse our corrupted vision by the visual tyranny imposed by the mass media.

Andy Llanes Bultó

Serie Cuerpo Celeste (II), 2018

Oil on canvas

150 x 150cm

Daniel R. Collazo

De la serie 'Ciudades infinitas', 2018

Charcoal on canvas

100 x 130cm

The proposals of the Collage Habana’s artists stand out for their mastery of pictorial techniques and drawing over colour. It is enough to contemplate the round-format-painting that articulates the series "Celestial Body" or "Levitaciones" (2018) of Andy Llanes Bultó, intimate exercises of anatomy; the charcoal drawings of infinite cities, always exponential, always dystopian, of Daniel R. Collazo; the female, provocative and idealised portraits of Roldán Lauzán Eiras; or the more mature, hybrid investigations of Ernesto Rancaño, games of lights and shadows, dreams and nightmares, which leave a sense of suspicion when contemplating its details.

Alessandra Rebagliati

Donut Wheel, 2018

Photography

20 x 70cm

Rocío Gómez

Extrañamiento, 2017

Óleo, collage y foto sobre cartulina

75 x 110cm

In this edition, the interesting Peruvian collective O-Art Project participates for the first time, a project lead by Alessandra Rebagliati, Jessica Schneider, Carolina Bazo and Gianna Pollarolo. The four artists have been carrying out projects for more than two decades. They aim to make visible the different practices and discourses that exist in the Peruvian art scene, managing to transcend and spreading "its roots from a globalised and contemporary perspective". Together with three other artists, they present in Art Madrid a suggestive selection of works, with very different imaginaries and concerns but under a collective vision. The works of these artists stand out for their hybrid and vindictive character, as seen in the works Carolina Bazo or Alessandra Rebagliati, focused on the reconfiguration of the stereotypes associated with women or the power exerted by the patriarchy and capitalist logic in our daily work.

Jessica Schneider

Yellow Capsule, 2017

Photography

35 x 45cm

We will also see the installations of metallic fibres and the transparencies of Cristina Colichón; the attractive works of Jessica Schneider, with her mysterious capsules adrift; or the photographic distortions of Jacques Custer. On the other hand, Gianna Pollarolo works around concepts such as energy, mysticism or the origins of the collective imagination; while Rocío Gómez is more interested in semiotic issues, as shown by the use of multi-vision in her impressive audiovisual works or the enigmatic stagings of painting, collage and photography, as we see in "Extrañamiento" (2017).

Samson Mnisi

Untitled, 2018

Oil on paper

107 x 78cm

Layziehound Coka

Bring Back The Power, 2018

Mixed media on canvas

250 x 200cm

Also for the first time, ODA Gallery participates in Art Madrid, a proposal that will allow us to enter a unique artistic scene of the African continent. We must highlight the oils on paper by Samson Mnisi (Lesotho), a creator whose language of patterns, lines, symbols and colours is as personal as inspiring; the reviews, and updates, of the local shapes and icons made by Jean-Baptiste Djeka (Ivory Coast), in which he combines painting, collage and photo-assembling; and the most critical readings of the sociopolitical state of the African citizen provided by Layziehound Coka (South Africa). ODA Gallery will also present the most traditional and magical paintings of Silas Adelanke Adeoye (Nigeria), geometric figures, flat and colourful, whose masks can lead us to the fascination that so many artists of the Avant-guards felt for the ancient African art.

Fernando Daza

Círculo naranja, 2018

Paper torn by hand and glued on fabric

80 x 80cm

Finally, from the heart of New York, comes the wide selection of Lola & the Unicorn. In his space, one can enjoy the abstract explorations of three artists: Bosco Sodi, a great connoisseur of Mexican muralism, whose paintings reflect the connections between the qualities of matter, textures and their echoes in spirituality; and the latest works by the Sevillians Isabelita Valdecasas and Fernando Daza, more material and textural in the paintings of the first one, more geometric and subtle in the fabrics of the latter.

Miguel Vallinas

Raiz 37, 2015

Photography

100 x 70cm

Juan Genovés

Analogía, 2016

Giclee on Hahnemühle paper

74 x 55.5cm

The gallery will also exhibit recent works by one of the great Spanish painters, Juan Genovés - also present in the Aurora Vigil Escalera space. From his characteristic figurative style, so close to the most gestural expressionist abstraction, and using his usual zenith perspectives, one can enjoy the endless crowd scenes which obsess the indefatigable painter that much. In addition, the selection of Lola & Unicorn will include the photographs of Miguel Vallinas, portraits with a marked surrealist character in which he reflects on contemporary identity: "what man wants to be, what he thinks he is, what others think of him and what we really are."

The pictorial work of Sergio Rocafort (Valencia, 1995) is articulated as a field of questioning rather than a system of closed visual statements. His paintings do not seek to close off meaning, but rather to activate an open perceptual experience, in which the viewer participates in a critical exercise of reconsidering the ways of seeing, interpreting, and conceiving painting in the present. The image thus presents itself as an unstable territory, where perception constantly oscillates between the visible and the imagined, and meaning is constructed in a provisional and shared manner.

One of the structural axes of his work is the tension between scale and intimacy. The format functions as a relational device, alternating physical immersion with concentrated attention, generating an expository rhythm that prompts the viewer to move around, approach, and withdraw. This spatial dynamic engages with a painting situated on the threshold between figuration and abstraction, sustaining a reflection on painting as both window and physical object, while emphasizing its material and spatial condition.

Rocafort’s creative process is also grounded in a dialectic between intuition and control. Far from a romantic notion of chance, the unexpected is understood as guided pictorial thinking, in which every decision—even those that appear accidental—responds to a critical awareness of the act of painting and a progressive refinement of the means of expression.

Untitled. 2024. Oil on panel, 30 x 45 cm..

Questioning seems to inhabit your painting. What kind of questions do you want your work to pose to the viewer?

Generally, my intention is for the work to provoke more questions than answers. Ultimately, I believe my work refers to shared spaces that nevertheless remain open to interpretation. I think that this interplay of questions—questions that arise for me as an artist in the studio—is interesting when it is later transferred to the viewer in the exhibition space. These questions usually concern the way we look, the way we interpret, and the way we conceive painting. It is a constant game between what we see and what we imagine.

Untitled. 2025. Oil on linen. 32.5 × 22.5 cm.

Your works seem to constantly stretch scale, moving from the intimate to the immersive. How do you decide what format each investigation requires?

I believe the main reason I choose one format or another depends on the exhibition installation. Beyond how each individual work functions, I think it is the overall vision that completes the project and gives it coherence and meaning. In many cases, these contrasts arise because a small work encourages an intimate approach, while a large work can have a stronger impact. Ultimately, this play of tensions causes the viewer to move closer, step back, and generates an interesting dialogue within the exhibition space itself.

In my case, I tend to work quite a lot with large formats because of the impact they produce. I believe there is a kind of translation that takes place—one that extends to the tools themselves—and this allows for greater expressiveness and a stronger impact on the viewer.

Untitled. 2015. Graphite on paper. 80 x 65 cm.

Critics often highlight your attention to proportion and detail. How do these concepts operate in a painting that resists figuration?

I do not think my painting resists figuration; rather, it constantly plays at its edges. Most of my references are figurative, but I seek to continually tension the relationship between volume and classical notions of pictorial construction, without losing the idea of the painting as a window—or rather, as an object. This relationship between painting-as-window and painting-as-physical-object is fundamental in my work; both aspects share common ground.

The result would be very different if one of these elements were set aside. But the game is not only formal: it is about generating ambiguity, creating a point at which the viewer must complete the work. I believe this operates both in hyperrealist figuration and in geometric abstraction, which is what I have been working on recently.

Abstraction allows me to detach completely from the image. In fact, I do not work with photographs or a predefined imaginary; instead, I generate my own notion of volume and space without relying on a prior model. Ultimately, even if I do not start from a figurative reference, this freedom coexists with the basic principles of painting. Neo Rauch, for example, does not need a maquette or a photograph, and I believe that same freedom is present in my work without abandoning those fundamental notions of painting.

Untitled. 2025. Oil on linen. 32.5 x 22.5 cm.

In your relationship with black, contrast, and chromatic vibration, how do you decide when a chromatic tension should be restrained or emphasized?

I think something similar happens here to what occurs with formats—it largely depends on the exhibition space. A painting can be small yet possess great chromatic force and a high level of contrast; even if it alludes to intimacy, it can generate a strong visual impact. In a larger format, the opposite may occur: low contrast or subtle nuances may function better. Everything depends on the relationship established between the works in the exhibition space and on how we want to bring the viewer closer or push them back in order to generate visual tension. In my work, synthesis, clarity, and the depth offered by color and material have always been present. I increasingly try to limit my resources so that the work functions with the bare minimum. Lately, for example, I have been drawing a great deal and working almost entirely with monochromatic ranges, because within that simplicity I believe many nuances can be explored and revealed—transparencies, density, contrast. This is, in essence, the chromatic game in my work.

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

I have always thought that I leave a great deal of room for error and chance, but lately I believe less in that version of the creative process. I think there is always a reflection and a guiding hand behind these “accidents.” I do try to allow unforeseen things to happen, but what emerges I would call intuition rather than chance, and I try to embrace it and guide it. This is, essentially, my way of understanding painting.

As for how I manage the timing of my projects, toward the end of this year I have a solo exhibition planned at Shiras Gallery, which will be a good moment to consolidate the works I have been developing and their visual impact. Recently, I have also been focusing on Art Madrid, which is approaching, and I am seeking for the exhibited works to have a cohesion, coherence, and clarity that some earlier works lacked. This time, the luminosity and saturation present in parts of my work shine more than ever, and I trust that the gallery will achieve a very successful exhibition installation at the fair.