Getting together, making a plan to get to know each other and discovering an artist's workspace together can be an appealing proposal to start approaching the world of art. It is always a stimulus for the senses to enter a fertile ground for the imagination and to breathe the creative environment that usually surrounds these intimate spaces. To prove this, we have organized #LaQuedada, an itinerary through the studios of some of the artists who will participate in Art Madrid'24.

Have you ever wondered what an artist's workspace looks like? Have you ever imagined where an artist produces his or her work, for example when preparing to participate in an art fair?

It's very possible that you have unanswered questions. So, to help you discover this wonderful world of possibilities, we have organized #LaQuedada, an Art Madrid initiative to bring you closer to the surprising and sometimes romanticized world in which visual artists create.

A visit to an artist's studio is the perfect opportunity to get to know their aesthetic visions first hand and to be part of the experience of listening to them talk.We take the time to understand what their working methodologies are, what future projects they are working on, what the processes of their works are like, what materials they use to achieve those effects that we never imagined could be possible to produce... And so, among so much curiosity, we take a journey that reveals order and chaos, sketches and pigments, mutant ideas and possible utopias, notes and strokes that give shape to the vitality that each new project represents.

Artists are inspired by the experiences of their lives and their most intimate surroundings, and in their works they express the conflicts that torment them and the concerns they perceive in the society of which they are a part. Each of them represents an intimate, authentic, personal and yet shared truth. A common connection that unites us with them through the sensitivity with which we can identify if we look at them with other eyes: the eyes of the soul.

Today, being an artist in the art world is an act of courage. More and more artists are threatened by the precarious situation in our country today. That is why it is so important to support, promote and accompany artists. It doesn't matter if they are emerging artists or have been working in the art sector for part of their lives, what you should keep in mind is that you can contribute to the development of their career by acquiring some of their work; visiting their profiles on social networks and sharing their projects; attending galleries, fairs, cultural institutions or museums where they are exhibiting; or simply, connecting with the vitality of their artistic expressions in a visit to their studios.

We want #LaQuedada will be a recurring space that encourages open dialogue between the public and creators. A responsible way to promote the growth of the city's cultural structure is to make art accessible to all types of audiences. At Art Madrid we know this, and that is why today, more than ever, we want to bring contemporary art closer to everyone, trying to break the illusion that defines it as elitist and distances it from its humanist vocation. Creativity is everywhere and life is in the artist's studio.

In the first edition of #LaQuedada, we will have the opportunity to visit the studios of five artists participating in Art Madrid'24:

Carlos Tárdez - Galería Bea Villamarín

Elena Gual - Arma Gallery

Lara Padilla - Punts Galería

Richard García - Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo

Marina Tellme - Open Booth Art Madrid’24

La Quedada is a project designed for all audiences. Is possible thanks to ONE SHOT HOTELS, one of Art Madrid'24's official sponsors.
You can be part of it if you are a professional in the field of culture or if you are a passionate art lover. The duration of the visits will be approximately one and a half hours. If you are interested, you can find the calendar of activities on our website. You can also register by clicking on the button below.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

CARLOS TÁRDEZ (Madrid, 1976)

Multidisciplinary artist, in whose work has special importance the prominence of the message that is hidden in all his creations.In both painting and sculpture, he has achieved a level of quality that has earned him, among many other awards, the Medal of Honor of the BMW Painting Prize in 2010, 2018 and 2021.

Carlos Tárdez in his studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

ELENA GUAL (Mallorca, 1994)

Elena Gual is known for her figurative paintings of women that celebrate their beauty and promote gender equality. Gual creates highly textured representations of skin, hair, and clothing by applying thick, impasto brushstrokes to her canvases with a palette knife. Gual is a graduate of the Florence Academy of Art. She strives to transform classical approaches to anatomy, composition, and light into her own style. Also a self-taught photographer, Gual often creates paintings from her own photographs, exploring the relationship between the two disciplines.

Elena Gual in her studio. image courtesy of the artist.

LARA PADILLA (Madrid, 1988)

Lara Padilla has a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master's degree in Film Photography Direction from the TAI School. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions at national and international level, such as her recent solo exhibition at the Juan Silió Gallery or her participation in the last editions of the Santander 2023 and Art Basel Miami 2022 art fairs. In addition to her artistic career, she has made a name for herself as a fashion designer, collaborating with clients such as Springfield, Pepe Jeans and Levis. She also actively collaborates with Patricia Field, the stylist behind series such as Sex In The City and The Devil Wears Prada, for her Patricia Field Art Fashion project, creating unique hand-painted garments. Lara Padilla lives and works in Madrid, Miami and New York.

ara Padilla in her studio. image courtesy of the artist.

RICHARD GARCÍA (Madrid, 1995)

Richard García graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in the year 2017. After this stage, he began his journey as an artist, winning numerous competitions and beginning to develop his own style and discourse. The creative process is one of the most important parts of his work, in which he allows himself to be guided by intuition, through which he reflects superimposition and transparency.

Richard García in his studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

MARINA TELLME (Almería, 1995)

She has a degree in Fine Arts from the Alonso Cano Faculty (Granada) and a Masters in Film Directing from the TAI. She has also qualified as a voice actress at the EDM (Madrid). Her work has been exhibited at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the García Lorca Art Centre (Granada), the Bless Hotel (Madrid), the Instituto de la Mujer de Almería, selected at the Art Sur Festival of Art in Action (Córdoba) and the Femujer de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), among others. Her art is the result of her passion for telling stories. Her paintings, sculptures and installations present a scenography (like a frame of an animated film) with characters and circumstances that are mostly comic and naïve in style, but with room for social criticism.

Marina Tellme in her studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

Daniel Barrio. Guest artist of the third edition of OPEN BOOTH. Courtesy of the artist.

DESPIECE. PROTOCOLO DE MUTACIÓN

As part of the Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program, we present the third edition of Open Booth, a space conceived as a platform for artistic creation and contemporary experimentation. The initiative focuses on artists who do not yet have representation within the gallery circuit, offering a high-visibility professional context in which new voices can develop their practice, explore forms of engagement with audiences, and consolidate their presence within the current art scene. On this occasion, the project features artist Daniel Barrio (Cuba, 1988), who presents the site-specific work Despiece. Protocolo de mutación.

Daniel Barrio’s practice focuses on painting as a space for experimentation, from which he explores the commodification of social life and the tyranny of media approval. He works with images drawn from the press and other media, intervening in them pictorially to disrupt their original meaning. Through this process, the artist opens up new readings and questions how meaning is produced, approaching painting as a space of realization, therapy, and catharsis.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación is built from urban remnants, industrial materials, and fragments of history, inviting us to reflect on which memories we inherit, which we consume, and which ones we are capable of creating. Floors, walls, and volumes come together to form a landscape under tension, where the sacred coexists with the everyday, and where cracks matter more than perfection.

The constant evolution of art calls for ongoing exchange between artists, institutions, and audiences. In its 21st edition, Art Madrid reaffirms its commitment to acting as a catalyst for this dialogue, expanding the traditional boundaries of the art fair context and opening up new possibilities of visibility for emerging practices.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación emerges from a critical and affective impulse to dismantle, examine, and reassemble what shapes us culturally and personally. The work is conceived as an inseparable whole: an inner landscape that operates as a device of suspicion, where floors, walls, and volumes configure an ecosystem of remnants. It proposes a reading of history not as a linear continuity, but as a system of forces in permanent friction, articulating space as an altered archive—a surface that presents itself as definitive while remaining in constant transformation.

The work takes shape as a landscape constructed from urban waste, where floors, walls, and objects form a unified body made of lime mortar, PVC from theatrical signage, industrial foam, and offering wax. At the core of the project is an L-shaped structure measuring 5 × 3 meters, which reinterprets the fresco technique on reclaimed industrial supports. The mortar is applied wet over continuous working days, without a pursuit of perfection, allowing the material to reveal its own character. Orbiting this structure are architectural fragments: foam blocks that simulate concrete, a 3D-printed and distorted Belvedere torso, and a wax sculptural element embedded with sandpaper used by anonymous workers and artists, preserving the labor of those other bodies.

A white wax sculptural element functions within the installation as a point of sensory concentration that challenges the gaze. Inside it converge the accumulated faith of offering candles and the industrial residues of the studio, recalling that purity and devotion coexist with the materiality of everyday life. The viewer’s experience thus moves beyond the visual: bending down, smelling, and approaching its vulnerability transforms perception into an intimate, embodied act. Embedded within its density are sanding blocks used by artists, artisans, and laborers, recovered from other contexts, where the sandpaper operates as a trace of the effort of other bodies, following a protocol of registration with no autobiographical intent.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación addresses us directly, asking: which memory do we value—the one we consume, or the one we construct with rigor? The audience leaves behind a purely contemplative position to become part of the system, as the effort of moving matter, documentary rigor, and immersive materiality form a body of resistance against a mediated reality. The project thus takes shape as an inner landscape, where floor, surface, and volume articulate an anatomy of residues. Adulteration operates as an analytical methodology applied to the layers of urban reality, intervening in history through theatrical and street advertising, architectural remnants, and administrative protocols, proposing that art can restore the capacity to build one’s own memory, even if inevitably fragmented.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

DANIEL BARRIO (1988, Cuba)

Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988) is a visual artist whose practice articulates space through painting, understanding the environment as an altered archive open to critical intervention. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Cienfuegos (2004–2008), specializing in painting, and later at the Madrid Film School (ECAM, 2012–2015), where he studied Art Direction. His methodology integrates visual thinking with scenographic narrative.

His trajectory includes solo exhibitions such as La levedad en lo cotidiano (Galería María Porto, Madrid, 2023), Interiores ajenos (PlusArtis, Madrid, 2022), and Tribud (Navel Art, Madrid, 2019), as well as significant group exhibitions including Space is the Landscape (Estudio Show, Madrid, 2024), Winterlinch (Espacio Valverde Gallery, Madrid, 2024), Hiberia (Galería María Porto, Lisbon, 2023), and the traveling exhibition of the La Rioja Young Art Exhibition (2022).

A member of the Resiliencia Collective, his work does not pursue the production of objects but rather the articulation of pictorial devices that generate protocols of resistance against the flow of disposable images. In a context saturated with immediate data, his practice produces traces and archives what must endure, questioning not the meaning of the work itself but the memory the viewer constructs through interaction—thus reclaiming sovereignty over the gaze and inhabiting ruins as a method for understanding the present.