Contour Art Gallery, DDR Art Gallery, Granada Gallery, About Art, Flux Zone, RV Cultura e Arte and Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo

Colour becomes the main theme of the new One Project program. It is the guiding thread that unites the artworks in different conceptual and formal dialogues. Lucid narratives in which you can lose yourself entering a beginning that takes us to another new beginning and in which reality is camouflaged, transcended or subverted.

Once again Art Madrid presents the One Project program, conceived to support and promote young artists whose careers are in an initial or intermediate state. The project takes place in a curated proposal within the fair in which the works of the creators are presented in a solo show format while maintaining a unitary vision.

Alejandra Atarés

Jardin con fondo rosa, 2018

Oil and acrylic on linen

150 x 150cm

This year, one of the great updates of the program is the incorporation of Nerea Ubieto, art critic and curator who presents a new proposal led only by female artists. This choice, as stated by Ubieto, is based “on the eagerness to level an unstable balance in which female participation in art fairs is still today unfair”. Under the title "Ficciones, máscaras y paisajes: el color como telón de fondo", 7 artists feature specific proposals for the fair in which the international presence stands out and specifically, highlighting Latin American participation.

As the curator explains, the works invite us to build our own universes, because "through creation, we can get rid of the burdens that slow down the development of society, dissolve stereotypes, invent new ones, own what we want to change and, effectively, transform it. No limits are worth having, just more or less believable masks; only colour with a more or less positive charge”.

Rūta Vadlugaitė

A Place for Bird Nests, 2015

Oil on canvas

73.7 x 101.5cm

Rūta Vadlugaitė

Hepatica, 2017

Oil on canvas

80 x 60cm

The worlds of Rūta Vadlugaitė, an artist represented by the Lithuanian Contour Art Gallery (Vilnius), are characterized by huge colour spots within a reduced palette. Her works are characterized by being compositions of resounding and minimal shapes because colour dominates everything. With a clear tendency towards blue tones, Vadlugaitė’s landscapes describe spaces that have a lot of abstraction, autobiography, intuition and rigour as Ubieto points out, defining them as "catapults of multiple psychological ideas" in which the artist’s states of mind are reflected as metaphors.

Virginia Rivas

Jugando al escondite, 2016

Acrylic, graphite and bodybuilder tape on canvas

20 x 20cm

Virginia Rivas

Oh, la mía pena, 2016

Acrylic, graphite and bodybuilder tape on canvas

40 x 40cm

A deep interest in the large colour spots mark the paintings of the most abstract and gestural Virginia Rivas, artist who is represented by the online gallery DDR Art Gallery (Madrid). Rivas' emotional abstraction is characterized by expanded stories, by small revelations about experiences or personal thoughts that interrupt her compositions. Altogether, her paintings are like traces of interior worlds now exteriorized and exposed in a beautiful "letting go" manner. As the curator points out, Rivas invites us to travel through perhaps more intimate places, but possible even in the framework of a fair.

Mara Caffarone

Sin título, 2018

Pastel óleo sobre papel

70 x 50cm

Mara Caffarone

Selfie portrait, 2015

Aerosol sobre polietileno

150 x 60cm

Also, Mara Caffarone’s work moves between the abstract and the gestural brushstroke, to which a marked sensory character is included. Represented by the Argentine Granada Gallery (Comuna), her work reflects on "the limits of perception and the need to identify what we observe”, explains Ubieto. From purely painting, Caffarone quickly jumps to the incorporation of extra-pictorial materials -especially plastics and air spray-, to video or installation. In fact, the proposal that will be presented at Art Madrid will include video, installation and painting in an artistic experience that will go far beyond the traditional and contemplative exhibition ways.

Nuria Mora

Sin título, 2018

Acrylic on paper

110 x 75cm

Nuria Mora

Sin título (Placas tectónicas I), 2018

Acrylic on paper

181.5 x 146cm

On the other hand, "the playful factor and the indomitable flexibility of the paintings" by Nuria Mora come to overflow any support, "as if the geometrized pigment were born from the bottom of the walls and collapsed by its cracks generating epidermal and cumulative layers", the curator explains. Represented by About Art Gallery (Lugo), Mora is one of the most outstanding artists of the so-called Post-Graffiti movement who, some time ago, has transferred her seductive organic and geometric shapes from the wall to the paper. However, as it could not be otherwise, these colourful shapes will again be insurgent and will exceed the limits of the imposed exhibition space boundaries.

Sofía Echeverri

Juegos prohibidos III, 2014

Acrílico y óleo sobre lienzo

120 x 160cm

Sofía Echeverri

Trampland con olas, 2015

Acrylic on canvas

180 x 220cm

Sofia Echeverri , who exhibits her works with the Flux Zone gallery (Mexico City), has a very particular way of expressing her stories. Echeverri begins with narratives in black and white, with a figurative and geometric tendency, which are updated and transcended through the introduction of the contrast of vivid colours such as magenta, green and blue. In general, behind this formal strategy, there is a conceptual criticism: "the colour contrast questions what we lose for what we prefer to keep says the artist". Art Madrid presents a selection of three of its most outstanding series: "Juegos prohibidos", "Trampland" and "Pedir la lluvia", series in which seduction, mystery and discomfort -even the sinister side, as Freud would say- compose stories that serve Echeverri to divide the reality.

Manuela Eichner

Bruja, 2018

Collage on wood

60 x 45cm

Also, the subversive masks of Manuela Eichner are presented at One Project program. They are creations with which the artist reinterprets female prototypes and myths using collage as a fundamental technique in order to alter their meanings. Represented by the Brazilian gallery RV Cultura e Arte (Salvador), Eichner will introduce us to Art Madrid in a unique tropical jungle in which a catalogue of perturbations of the traditional female role is described. It is a visual rewriting work of with which it creates new paradigms, proposes new iconographies, where the provocation brings together icons of the mythological tradition with pornographic stereotypes and vegetable motives to reflect on "the domestication of the wild". Plants and women as main characters because, as Ubieto says, in both cases one can speak about "tamed bodies, subdued, reduced to mere decoration".

Alejandra Atarés

Japonesa con palmeras nevadas, 2017

Oil and acrylic on linen

114 x 146cm

Alejandra Atarés also shares these claims who, represented by the gallery Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo (Barcelona), closes the One Project proposal with two of her main lines of work. On the one hand, she invites us to star in other people's lives looking through the colourful representation of women who turn their backs to us: they usually hide their face, absorbed by blurred horizons. On the other, also from her characteristic figurative shapes and full of colour motifs, she takes us to dreamlike landscapes in which "she breaks the rules of perspective and real space introducing us to fictitious paradises in which the inside and the outside are confused”. As the curator concurs, “colour expands, contaminates the environment and connects the seven proposals in a wave of freshness and vigour”.

The work of Julian Manzelli (Chu) (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974) is situated within a field of research in which art adopts methodologies close to scientific thinking without renouncing its poetic and speculative dimension. His practice is structured as an open process of experimentation, in which the studio functions as a laboratory: a space for trial, error, and verification, oriented less toward the attainment of certainties than toward the production of new forms of perception. In this sense, his work enters into dialogue with an epistemology of uncertainty, akin to philosophical traditions that understand knowledge as a process of becoming rather than closure.

Manzelli explores interstitial zones, understood as spaces of transit and transformation. These ambiguous areas are not presented as undefined but as potential—sites where categories dissolve, allowing the emergence of hybrid, almost alchemical configurations that reprogram the gaze. Geometry, far from operating as a normative system, appears tense and destabilized. His precarious constructions articulate a crossing between intuition and reason, play and engineering, evoking a universal grammar present in both nature and symbolic thought. Thus, Manzelli’s works do not represent the world but rather transfigure it, activating questions rather than offering closed answers.

Avícola. Escultura magnética. Madera, imanes, laca automotriz y acero. 45 x 25 cm. 2022.

Science and its methods inspire your process. What kinds of parallels do you find between scientific thinking and artistic creation?

Science and art are two disciplines that I believe share a great deal and are undoubtedly deeply interconnected. I am interested in that point of intersection, and although they are often placed in opposition, I think they share a common origin. Both involve a continuous search, a need for answers that stems from curiosity rather than certainty, and that often—or in many cases—leads both artists and scientists into uncomfortable, uncertain positions, pushing them out of their comfort zones. I believe this is a fundamental and very compelling aspect shared by these two disciplines, which in some way define us as human beings.

In this sense, both share experimentation as a core axis of their practice. Trial and error, testing, and the entire process of experimentation are what generate development. In my case, this applies directly to the studio: I experience it as a laboratory where different projects are developed and materials are tested. It is as if one formulates a hypothesis and then puts it to the test—materials, procedures, forms, colors—and outcomes emerge. These results are not meant to be verified, but rather, in art, I believe their function is to generate new modes of perception, new ways of seeing, and new experiences.

Receptor Lunar #01. Ensamble de Madera Reciclada torneada. 102 x 26 x 26 cm. De la serie Fuerza orgánica. 2023.

You work within the interstices between the natural and the artificial, the figurative and the abstract. What interests you about these ambiguous zones, and what kinds of knowledge emerge from them?

I have always been quite restless, and that has led me to immerse myself in different fields and disciplines. I believe there is a special richness in interstitial spaces—in movement back and forth, in circulation between media. These spaces have always drawn my attention: ambiguous places, hybrid zones. There is something of an amphibious logic here—amphibians as entities that carry and transmit information, that share, that cross boundaries and membranes. In my case, this is closely linked to what I understand as freedom, especially at a time marked by categorization, labeling, and a profound distortion of the very concept of freedom.

On another level, more metaphysical in nature, it is within the mixture—within that blending—that the living energy of creating something new appears, which is undoubtedly a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. It is as if “one thing becomes something else outside the mold.” This interaction is necessary to break structures, to build new ones, to transmute—to undergo something almost alchemical. I believe fixation is the enemy. In a way, ambiguity is what allows us to reprogram our gaze and generate new points of view.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

Movement, repetition, and sequence appear as visual strategies in your work. What role does seriality play in the generation of meaning?

Movement, repetition, and sequence are very present in my work. I have a long background in animation, and in some way that interest begins to filter into the other disciplines in which I work. Thus, movement also appears in my visual art practice.

Seriality is a way of thinking about time and of introducing a certain narrative and sense of action into the work, while at the same time conditioning the viewer’s experience. It invites the viewer to try to decipher repetition as a kind of progression. I am particularly interested in more abstract forms of narrative. In this type of narrative, where there is no clear figuration, repetition begins to establish a pulse, a “beat” that marks the passage of time. What is interesting, I think, is the realization that repetition is not exactly duplication, and that what seems identical begins to mutate over time, through rhythm, or through its own unfolding history.

De la serie Naturaleza orgánica. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de construcción. 2025.

You work with geometric and constructive systems. What role does geometry play as a symbolic language within your practice?

Geometry is present in my work in multiple forms and dimensions, generating different dynamics. Generally, I tend to put it into crisis, into tension. When one engages closely with my works, it becomes clear that constructions based on imprecise and unstable balance predominate. I am not interested in symmetry or exactness, but rather in a dynamic construction that proposes a situation. I do not conceive of geometry as a rigid system.

I believe this is where a bridge is established between the intuitive and the rational, between playfulness and engineering—those unexpected crossings. At the same time, geometry functions as a code, a language that connects us to a universal grammar present in nature, in fractals, and that undoubtedly refers to symbolism. It is there that an interesting portal opens, where the work begins to re-signify itself and becomes a process of meaning-making external to itself, entirely uncertain. The results of my works are not pieces that represent; rather, I believe they are pieces that transfigure and, in doing so, generate questions.

WIP. Madera torneada recuperada de podas de sequía y rezagos de contrucción. 2022.

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

In terms of planning, it depends greatly on the project and even on the day. Some projects, due to their scale or complexity, require careful planning, especially when they involve the participation of other people. In many cases, planning is undoubtedly essential.

That said, in the projects I do plan, I am always interested in leaving space for improvisation, where chance or the unfolding of the process itself can come into play. I believe this is where interesting things begin to emerge, and it is important not to let them pass by. Personally, I would find it very boring to work on pieces whose outcome I already know in advance. For me, the realization of each work is an uncertain journey; I do not know where it will lead, and I believe that is where its potential lies—not only for me, but also for the work itself and for the viewer’s experience.