The One Project Program, curated for the fifth consecutive year by Carlos Delgado Mayordomo, has become a true showcase for new talent. These are the 8 projects of the 13th edition of the fair.

Alejandro Monge

The European Dream 2, 2017

Polychrome galvanized steel

42 x 52cm

Alejandro Monge

Mickey L. Mouse (Age from 2 to 99), 2015

Polyurethane resin

19 x 10cm

Alejandro Monge, Candela Muniozguren, Antonyo Marest, Carlos Nicanor, Bernardo Medina, Jugo Kurihara, Aina Albo Puigserver and Vânia Medeiros are the 8 artists selected by the independent curator Carlos Delgado Mayordomo to form the One Project Program at Art Madrid'18, a program designed on young and mid-career artists with specific projects developed for their exhibition at the fair.

In One Project, 8 artists design a specific proposal for an individual stand, these 8 projects, with a resounding and coherent entity, they dialogue guided by the hand of the curator. The objective is to captivate the public, allowing them a break within the commercial context of the art fair. "One Project has served to establish a dynamic, open and polivocal relationship with those visitors interested in establishing a more deliberate and reflective view within such an overwhelming and oversaturated context of information as it is a contemporary art fair", explains Carlos Delgado Mayordomo.

Candela Muniozguren

Pink Up 01, 2016

Lacquered steel

55 x 28cm

Candela Muniozguren

Shenbazuru 01, 2017

Brass

42 x 52cm

In the edition of Art Madrid'18, One Project is made up of the following projects:

Alejandro Monge (Zaragoza, 1988) with 3 Punts Galeria (Barcelona). Endowed with a solid plastic formation and interested in the complex channels of figuration in the current creation, the recent research of Alejandro Monge seeks to investigate the economic contradictions of our present. Conformed as a series and grouped under the title "European Dream", its latest proposal is organized around the conceptualization of money as an index that modulates our understanding of the world in a context mediated by the financial crisis of 2008.

Candela Muniozguren (Madrid, 1986) with Bea Villamarín (Gijón). The sculptural work of this artist poses an intimate communication between her creative developments, where minimalist forms dominate, and the multiplicity of chromatic effects.

Antonyo Marest

Hugonnard, 2018

Spray enamel on wood

60 x 60cm

Antonyo Marest

Euclid, 2018

Spray enamel on wood

60 x 60cm

Antonyo Marest (Alicante, 1987) with Diwap Gallery (Seville). The jumps of scale, the exit of the interior of a museum to the clarity of the streets, the urban style shared with the public in the form of painting, sculpture and photography. Marest has geometry as a symbol of personal growth and positivism about architecture, line, plane and color. From Seville, DIWAP Gallery works immersed in the most current contemporary art, with the aim of approaching a demanding public and always in constant search for new contributions to the local and national art scene. With a special inclination towards young and urban art, DIWAP Gallery has been defined by the representation of its artists and their works. In short, DIWAP invests in the investigation of new lines of contemporary works and new forms of curatorial projects, preferably linked to mural art and installation.

Carlos Nicanor

Marina mimética, 2017

Bronze

67 x 35cm

Carlos Nicanor (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1974) with Artizar gallery (La Laguna, Tenerife). Brossanian sculptor, his creativity aspires to create works that are at the same time caustic alteration of the object and its meaning. The sculptural intensity of Nicanor is poetic in nature.

In 1989, in the center of the city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife, the Artizar art gallery began its journey, with the main objective of making known and establishing a meeting point for art in the Canary Islands. A wide range of artists from the islands has passed through its walls, from paintings of the XVIII, XIX and XX centuries, contemporary painters of recognized national and international prestige and, of course, young artists who have grown up with the gallery.

Bernardo Medina

Isla de Todos, 2017

Fiberglass

182 x 76cm

Bernardo Medina (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1965) with Nuno Sacramento (Ílhavo, Portugal). Distinguished by his ability to integrate objects found in his travels, to create beautiful and strong abstract pieces, the artistic development of Bernardo Medina has been the result of a long process of study and experimentation from the everyday to be projected in paintings and sculptures with a strong visual poetics

The Nuno Sacramento Gallery has been active since 2003 with the opening of its first gallery in the city of Aveiro, Portugal. In 2009 he moved to the nearby city of Ilhavo, to a space specially designed for a gallery of contemporary art, where it remains until now. It annually develops around six solo and three collective exhibitions, in the disciplines of painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video.

Jugo Kurihara

Sin título 3, 2017

Japanese ink on glossy paper

24 x 18cm

Jugo Kurihara (Japan, 1977) with Pantocrator Gallery (Suzhou, China). In his works, he combines Asian and European artistic languages and successfully converts it into his own expression: images of a disturbing beauty, capable of referring unpublished worlds, of tracing complex writings and, above all, of mobilizing the spectator in front of a flowing painting that always seem to be about to stabilize in a specific iconography.

Pantocrator Gallery is a project for the dissemination and production of contemporary art by emerging international artists in any of its disciplines. Pantocrator Gallery, as a nomadic project that is, has its physical headquarters in the Chinese city of Suzhou, but it has visited cities such as Barcelona, ​​Berlin or Shanghai in which they continue to work eventually. Pantocrator Gallery works as a cultural bridge between Asia and the West.

Aina Albo Puigserver

Dubte, 2016

Wood, plywood and lacquer

109 x 109cm

Aina Albo Puigserver

Desolació, 2016

Mixed media

53 x 39cm

Aina Albo Puigserver (Palma de Mallorca, 1982) with Pep Llabrés Art Contemporani (Palma de Mallorca). Experiences that go beyond the senses, Aina Albo investigates and approaches her emotions and sensations to understand them better, giving them shape and color in an attempt to turn the abstract into concrete.

Pep Llabrés, after a long journey in the sector, opened his own space in April 2015, and since then focuses his activity in the field of contemporary art, giving visibility to young values with new languages of expression, without forgetting the contribution to the art world of artists with more experience, both national and international.

Vânia Medeiros (Salvador de Bahía, Brazil, 1984) with the RV Cultura e Arte gallery (Salvador de Bahía, Brazil). Visual artist and editor whose work deals with human and emotional maps and creates subjective cartographies and ways of graphically expressing the experiences of a traveling body in the city.

Vânia Medeiros

Intuição, 2016

Pigments on paper

42 x 60cm

Vânia Medeiros

Intuição, 2016

Pigments on paper

42 x 60cm

RV Cultura e Arte is a contemporary art gallery based in Salvador de Bahia focused on works on paper (drawing, painting, collage and printing processes) and emerging Brazilian artists. Inaugurated in 2008 by Larissa Martina and Ilan Iglesias, RV Cultura e Arte carries out a diverse annual program offering at least four exhibitions as well as workshops, talks, guided visits and viewings that foster a closer relationship with the local community, collectors and curators . Since 2011, RV Cultura e Arte has also developed an editorial project with artist books and graphic novels.

A mixed and international selection, different perspectives and starting points that find, in One Project, common frequencies in which to dialogue and share a handful of concepts. However, as Delgado Mayordomo explains, "these lines work only as a tool box to think about the work of artists without denying the relevance of other constructions".

Buying the first work of art always instils respect. A difficult feeling to define that mixes vertigo with adrenaline. But over uncertainty and caution, a pleasurable sense of connection, understanding, and desire prevails. That work that, once seen, stays in the mind, reappears in the memory several times a day and seems to tell you that it is willing to be part of your home, is the perfect candidate to make the decision.

In the first steps, many collectors do point out that one does not start from an established plan, but rather that one acquires pieces based on taste and the connection one feels with them until, after time, they realise that the volume of works that accumulates can be labelled as a "collection". For example, this is how Alicia Aza explains it:

“I was not aware that I was collecting until many years later when a third party named me as a collector and talked about my collection. In 2005, I became aware of what collecting means and decided to articulate a collection with an identity of criteria and formats”.

Marcos Martín Blanco, co-founder, with his wife Elena Rueda, of the MER Collection, shares this same opinion:

“Collecting has been a passion, driven by a visceral state that encourages you to do so. The collection, in terms of acquisitions, has not been particularly complicated because, let's face it: it is easy to buy because they are all beautiful things and you have some clear idea of where you want to go, but at first those preferences were not so clear. It is with the time that a criterion is being formed”.

It is not always this way, of course, but for the buyer who starts out on this path, the personal connection that entails the first piece is essential. There it is the germ of a lasting relationship that is not limited to a simple aesthetic question but is an open window to knowledge, to exploration, to a world that is often unknown to us and awakens our fascination. The seed of that connection is purely sentimental, and it is precisely this impulse that determines the first acquisitions. The first piece is never forgotten.

Art Madrid'20, photo by Ana Maqueda

Exceeding the usual recommendations made by advisers and agents, rare is the occasion when the art lover decides to buy by pure investment. These paths usually open later, when the volume of pieces is large enough. In addition, there are those who are a bit against this classic concept of the traditional collector, approached from an eccentric, elitist and little accessible vision. On the contrary, art buyers are, above all, art lovers, sentient beings and permeable to creative stimulus who, at a given moment, decide to deepen the relationship they already have with art to take a piece home.

It is not that hard to overcome that small psychological barrier that turns the visitor into a buyer if one approaches the matter from a more personal and intimate perspective than from social consideration. Small-format works, graphic work or serial photography are of great help for this, whose price range, generally more affordable, allows a closer comparison to the daily basis expenses. In this way, the purchase of art falls within the range of feasible activities and becomes something close and possible.

Art Madrid'20, photo by Marc Cisneros

At that moment, a different relationship with art begins, based on pure experience and coexistence with the acquired piece. Perhaps it can be seen as an act of daring, but on many occasions, it is more a matter of necessity and transformation. Collectors also agree that the acquisition of an artwork is an exercise on personal analysis and opening up to a new field of knowledge that was previously alien to us. Alicia Aza explains that the reason she acquired her first piece of video art, by Sergio Prego, is because she did not understand it and because she saw it as a challenge and an opportunity to self-improve. This open window to knowledge creates new connections and bonds with creators, as one of the most fascinating parts of the process. Candela Álvarez Soldevilla explains that

"I think the most interesting thing in the art world is talking to artists. They are people with a special sensitivity to listen and understand.”

And Alicia Aza also says:

"I can share the satisfaction of being able to count on many artists in my circle of close friends today, and that is a long way to go."

Thus, with works that seem acceptable within the horizon of expenses that each one considers affordable, it is easy to find a piece that catches us. Since then, our home also evolves into a space in which art has a permanent place and presence, and there is no doubt that this transforms us inside.

Art Madrid'20, photo by Henar Herguera

Jaime Sordo, owner of Los Bragales collection and founder of the 9915 Contemporary Art Collectors Association, has always defined his relationship with art as a true passion and a vital necessity. For buyers who start on this path, he has the following recommendation:

“It is an essential condition that they feel the need to live with their passion to enjoy the works. Another very important aspect is that before making decisions for purchases, they are informed, so it is necessary to read specialised newspapers and books, visit exhibitions and museums and a lot of contact with galleries, which is an important and very specific source of information of the artists they represent. Finally, the presence in national and international art fairs. All this generates information and training.”

Indeed, fairs have become a good place for discovery because they condense a wide offer and allow diverse and global contact in a concentrated way. For this reason, many new generation buyers start in the context of an event such as Art Madrid, whose closeness and quality constitute a unique opportunity to meet, soak up and feed the passion for art.

(*) quotes taken from various interviews published in public media between 2013 and 2019.