The One Project program brings in this edition a risky bet: investigate and question the forms and concepts that dominate the art market. Fashions, trends, the imposition of globalization, the mainstream... All of them are elements that make up the flows, institutions and legitimizing actions of professional artistic development.

One Project has evolved since its creation. This is a transversal proposal that in last years step up its position as one of the fundamental pillars of the fair. Art Madrid wanted to go one step further to celebrate its 15th edition and expand and transform it into a space for dialogue and confrontation that includes a greater number of participating artists working from a different perspective to understand contemporary creation.

Julio Anaya

Edouard Vuillard - Jarrón de flores, 2019

Acrílico sobre cartón

56 x 57cm

Virginia Rivas

Sentir, 2018

Acrylic and graphite on canvas

162 x 130cm

One of the great innovations of One Project is the incorporation of the critic and curator Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta that under the enigmatic title of "Salvajes. La cage aux fauves" presents a selection of 9 artists who will exhibit their work in a differentiated space of symbiosis, stimulation, contact and friction.

Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta makes his proposal classic starting dichotomy that existed between the great official salons and those creators who subverted the state of the question, either from their convoluted participation in them or by generating new alternative devices such as independent or des refusés salons.

Alona Harpaz

Art in America, 2019

Acrilico, spray y colores industriales sobre lienzo

70 x 100cm

In spite of dynamics of the art market to which a contemporary art fair is subject, Art Madrid is committed to have a space for research and reflection to give visibility to artists who are on the way of creation autonomously and personally without responding directly to the majority guidelines. Artists who travel through their own, unusual spaces and who resist being part of the globalisation.

From the visible questioning made by Julio Anaya of classical painting to the investigation of colour and his perception according to the emotional, social and political state that Virginia Rivas performs. Also through the collection and reconstruction that Roberto López creates to make us visible the consumerism and mega-production to which we are exposed without pause for digestion.

RLM

Avatar Cowboy, 2017

Tela sobre fibra de vidrio y resina

150 x 30cm

RLM

Avatar El Elegido, 2016

Tela sobre fibra de vidrio y resina

150 x 30cm

The artists of One Project generate this analogy with the classic halls that now travel from academics and stand on trends that create apparent success guidelines without depth discursive.

Itineraries that run out of the usual and conventional without leaving indifferent as to the work of Andrés Planas where converges primitive art, especially Africans, with sex, with excesses, with taboos, with violence and with death, with religion and against the church, against repressive teaching.

Andrés Planas

Los 12 Apóstoles, 2019

Mixed media

35 x 15cm

The audience can observe a creation-destruction dialogue, with respect but without fear, with irreverence, without formality to give space to resistance. Transgress beauty as the artist Alona Harpaz or transit in magical spaces between nature and the human through the sculpture of Nicolás Laiz Placeres.

Alona Harpaz

Betty Blue, 2019

Acrílico y spray sobre lienzo

100 x 80cm

Nicolás Laiz

Política Natural I, 2018

Resina, fibra de vidrio, aridos y pintura doble componente

80 x 30cm

Art is a place of meeting and life, the magic of creation is deposited in a calm look of the environment as Santiago Palenzuela do with his spatula or by focusing on the current way of life between superficiality and imposture, between the psychic and the genuine as Juan Carlos Batista does with his images.

Juan Carlos Batista

Psicopaisaje II, 2015

Impresión digital en papel de algodón

60 x 77cm

Santiago Palenzuela

Ola, 2019

Oil on canvas

200 x 200cm

One Project is a program where there is also space for the fusion between classical art and urban art like the duo PichiAvo creating a new conceptual language handy for a heterogeneous audience.

PichiAvo

Orphical Hymn III to Nike, 2019

Mixed media on canvas

120 x 90cm

The work of Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) is situated within a genealogy of contemporary art that interrogates the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent, placing artistic practice on a threshold where nature, time, and perception converge. His research begins with an apparently minor geomorphological phenomenon—the traces left in the sand by the action of the tides—and transforms it into a poetic device for sensitive observation of the landscape. The temporal restriction imposed by low tide functions not only as a technical constraint but also as a conceptual structure that organizes the creative process and aligns it with an ethic of radical attention and presence.

Far from approaching the landscape as a mere backdrop or stage, Castaño recognizes in the maritime environment a generative system that precedes all human intervention. The sea, wind, and light produce autonomous records that he translates pictorially, shifting authorship toward a practice of listening and mediation.

The territory—initially asturian and progressively extended to other geographical contexts—functions as a material archive and situated memory. Each work becomes an unrepeatable index of a specific place and moment, revealing the fragility of natural cycles without resorting to explicit rhetoric of denunciation. In this way, Iyán Castaño’s painting operates as an active pause, a gesture of suspension that allows us to experience the world’s constant transformation from a sensitive and reflective proximity.

Open waters. 14-04-24. Expanded graphic on canvas. 2024. Detail.

In your practice, you work under the time constraint imposed by low tide. How does this temporal limit shape your creative process?

Low tide profoundly conditions my working method, but it does not function merely as a time limit; rather, it is the axis around which the entire project is structured. There is a prior phase in which I study meteorological conditions and the possible climatic variations of a specific day; based on this, I know whether I will be able to work and with which materials.

Once on the beach, during low tide, I have a very limited window—sometimes barely two hours or even less—in which I must move through the space searching for existing traces. If I find one, I intervene in it; if not, I must move on to another beach. After the intervention, I have to remove it quickly before the sea returns and erases every trace. In a way, these works transform the ripples of sand—those forms that are essentially ephemeral—into something permanent.

Where the sea is born. 15-09-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. Rodiles Beach, Asturias. 2025.

How does the meteorological and maritime environment—the unpredictability of the sea, wind, light, and tide—become a co-author of your pieces?

I do not consider the environment a co-author in the traditional sense, but rather the true author of the traces I work with. I am interested in understanding nature as a great creator: through tides, waves, wind, and light, the sand generates forms that are in constant regeneration. In order to create my works, the sea must first have created its own.

From there, using acrylics, oils, waxes, or sprays, I attempt to translate into the work my sensations and emotions in front of the sea at that specific moment. Whether it is winter or summer, cloudy or sunny, a small cove or an expansive beach, all of these context conditions result and become imprinted in the work.

Sand Ripples. 07-04-21. Expanded graphic on canvas. 189 x 140 cm. Niembro Estuary. Asturias. 2021.

Your work is closely tied to the Asturian territory—beaches, coastal forests, the cove of La Cóndia. What role do place, topography, local identity, and geographic memory play in your practice?

Place is everything in my project. Asturias was the point of departure and the territory where my gaze was formed. I have been working along this line for seven years, and over time I have come to understand that each trace is inseparable from the specific site and the exact day on which it is produced.

From there, I felt the need to expand the map and begin working in other territories. So far, I have developed works in Senegal, Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands, Indonesia, and elsewhere—and in each case, the result is completely different. The sea that bathes those coasts, the arrangement of the rocks, the morphology of the beach, or even the animals that inhabit it generate unique traces, impossible to reproduce elsewhere. This specificity of territory—its topography and geographic memory—is inscribed in each work in a singular, inseparable, and unrepeatable way.

Mangata. 05-11-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 190 x 130 cm. Sorraos Beach. Llanes. 2025.

To what extent are climate change, rising sea levels, altered tidal cycles, or coastal erosion present—or potentially present—as an underlying reflection in your work?

My work does not originate from an ecological intention or a direct form of protest. If there is a reflection on the environment, it emerges indirectly, by bringing people closer to the landscape, inviting them to observe attentively and to develop a more empathetic relationship with the environment they inhabit. Beaches are in constant transformation, but I do not seek to fix the landscape; rather, I attempt to convey the experience of being in front of it. In this sense, each work is like a small sea that one can take home.

Tree of Life. 19-02-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 50 x 70 cm. El Puntal Beach. Asturias. 2025.

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

In my work there is very little planning in terms of the final result, but there is a very precise preliminary planning. Before going to the beach, I monitor the time of low tide, wave height, wind, and weather conditions; based on this, I decide which beach to go to. Even so, when I arrive, I still do not know what work I am going to make. It is there that I determine which material to use, which color to apply, and where the intervention will take place. Many times, the environment simply does not allow work on that day, and chance becomes an essential element of these works. Error, in turn, becomes a new possibility if one learns how to work with it.