Art Madrid celebrates its fourteenth edition from February 27 to March 3, 2019, in the Crystal Gallery of CentroCentro Cibeles, with the participation of more than 40 national and international galleries that will show the works of nearly 200 artists, both creators emerging as consolidated. With an outstanding foreign presence, which this year reaches 40% and reaffirms the confidence placed in the fair by the international context, 26 national and 16 foreign exhibitors from 13 countries, from Spain to Germany, France, Portugal, Lithuania, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, South Africa or Taiwan, and including the incorporation of 10 first-time participating galleries.

Galería Hispánica’s booth at Art Madrid, photo by Sara Ortega.

This year, the wide and varied proposal of Art Madrid stands out for its increasingly international character and for a more contemporary artistic selection. Also, the fair reinforces its ongoing commitment to young creators and the most current forms of creation, as proven by the high number of artists under 40 (63), the choice of Rubén Martín de Lucas as Guest Artist or the Parallel Program main theme. In fact, the fair has developed a large set of educational and cultural activities that this year revolve around a very current and booming artistic genre, which we will soon announce.

Carolina Bazo, “Patrones”, photography, 2017. O-Art Project.

In the General Program, a large number of national galleries participate again, such as Madrid's Kreisler, Marita Segovia, Alberto Cornejo BAT, Fucking Art Gallery, Contemporary Hispanic (also based in Mexico City), Jorge Alcolea and Montsequi. From Asturias the galleries directed by Aurora Vigil-Escalera (Gijón), Bea Villamarín (Gijón) and Arancha Osoro (Oviedo) are returning participants too, while from Galicia, Luisa Pita (Santiago de Compostela) and Moret Art (A Coruña) also return to the fair. From the northern part of the Peninsula, Galería Espiral (Noja, Cantabria), Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero, Burgos) and MH Art Gallery (Bilbao), as well as the newly participating Kur Art Gallery (Guipúzcoa), are joining us this year. From Valencia the new proposals of Alba Cabrera Gallery and Shiras Gallery are presented, as well as those of the galleries that are coming from Barcelona: 3 Punts, Miquel Alzueta and Zielinsky. In addition, the Galería Cornión (Gijón) and Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo (Barcelona), which is also present in the One Project programme, are being premiered at the Crystal Gallery.

Lantomo, “Darkness 06 Doll”, graphite, pastel and watercolor on paper, 2018. Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo.

Among the foreign participating galleries from the General Program, the Portuguese representation is highlighted with Art Lounge (Lisbon), Paulo Nunes-Arte Contemporânea (Vila Franca de Xira) and the newly incorporation of the São Mamede Gallery (Lisbon/Porto). Also participating for the first time are the French Galerie Barrou Planquart (Paris), the North American Lola & the Unicorn (New York), the South African Oda Gallery (Franschhoek) and the Peruvian art collective O-Art Project (Lima). The renewed selections of the German Schmalfuss (Berlin) and Robert Drees (Hannover), the French Norty Mécénat (Carrières-sur-Seine), the Taiwanese Yiri Arts (Taipei) and the Cuban Collage Habana (Havana) have return this edition as well.

View of Art Madrid, photo by Julia Mateo.

One more year, Art Madrid also features the One Project program. The project, designed to support and promote young artists whose careers are in an initial or intermediate state, takes place in a collective exhibition in a solo show format. 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 leaded 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”.

Alejandra Atarés, “Cactus naranjas”, oil and acrylic on linen, 2018. Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo.

Under the title "Ficciones, máscaras y paisajes: el color como telón de fondo", 7 artists feature specific proposals for the fair, which, as the curator explains, invite us to build our own universes. In the program, the international presence is again highlighted, and the pieces by Rūta Vadlugaitė (with Contour Art Gallery, Vilna), Virginia Rivas (DDR Art Gallery, Madrid), Mara Caffarone (Granada Gallery, Comuna), Nuria Mora (About Art, Lugo), Sofia Echeverri (Flux Zone, Mexico City), Manuela Eichner (RV Cultura e Arte, Salvador) and Alejandra Atarés (Víctor Lope Arte Contemporáneo, Barcelona) will be revealed at the fair.

Pepa Salas Vilar, “Desiderare con l’anima”, mix media on canvas, 2018. Galerie Robert Drees.

in this edition, as the Selection Committee assures, the proposals are highlighted because of the increasing quality, the more rigorous selection, the growing international character and the ability to reveal the new possibilities in the world of creation. Also, they are articulating fully contemporary and well-connected discourses, drawing something of the map of our time, in contemporary art. We invite you to stay tuned to our news section where, little by little, we will present all the programs in detail. We await you in Art Week!

One of the purposes of the “Art Madrid-Proyector’20” program was to offer the opportunity to get to know the work of some invited creators, and, through an interactive talk, allow the public to open a direct dialogue with them. For this reason, from February 12th to 14th, were organised three masterclasses at Medialab Prado with Patxi Araújo, Olga Diego and Lois Patiño, all authors who work with the moving image, but who approach their projects from a diametrically opposite perspective. With this agenda, we were able to discuss three essential lines of current video-creation: the fusion with technology and artificial intelligence, the shaping of performances for documentary purposes and video art with film overtones. We already had the opportunity to remember the session with Patxi Araújo and his site-specific work "Sherezade" created for the Medialab Prado façade. Today we will talk about the meeting we had with Olga Diego and Lois Patiño.

Olga diego, photo by Javier Adiego

Olga Diego’s masterclass has as title: “The flight as a creative matter”. Olga is a multidisciplinary artist who in recent years has focused her work on sculpture and performance or action art, which she later documents with photography and video. This last aspect is one of the most interesting for her when she reflects on how the transformation of the piece from an experiential format to a recorded one takes place, and how individuals have become used to consuming this class of less invasive final products, from a space of comfort that our private devices offer.

One of Olga's main lines of research is related to autonomous flight systems and the creation of artefacts capable of rising with little energy. Can one create a material lighter than air itself? This idea has led her to experiment with numerous scientific forms and concepts, as well as taking a historical journey through the beginnings of flight and the progress of humanity to invent devices capable of flying. It is not just about recovering the history of aviation, something that has a much more technological and commercial side, but to investigate the ideas, experiments and tests that analysed the behaviour of air, the dynamics of flows and the design of individual aerodynamic structures, a concern that the human being showed since the Renaissance, with Leonardo Da Vinci.

Olga Diego, photo by Mario Gutiérrez Cru

Olga recovers many of these concepts and applies them to her recent projects. In her latest proposals, she has also worked with inflatable figures, as an alternative to conducted flight, using plastic materials for its construction. Her last exhibition “The automatic garden”, which could be enjoyed at the Alicante Museum of Contemporary Art and the Lonja del Pescado Exhibition Hall, also in Alicante, is a gigantic installation made up of almost a hundred inflatable-electronic sculptures inspired by the beautiful, extravagant and suggestive characters from the Garden of Earthly Delights, by El Bosco. This cloud of humanoid and zoomorphic figures, which move and beat thanks to the electronic mechanisms that keep them permanently inflated, also portrays the excesses of man, his lack of concern for the invasion of the environment, the overexposure to plastic and the exploitation of natural resources. A composition that focuses on "sin", as an indirect message that was also conveyed in the work of El Bosco.

Masterclass of Lois Patiño. Photo by Marta Suárez-Mansilla

For his part, Lois Patiño's career is intimately connected to film work. “Time and image” was the title of his masterclass. His video pieces, whether brief or feature-long films contain a concern closely linked to film language, but on a path that leaves conventional narratives aside. Among the main motifs that occupy his work, Lois opts for more contemplative aesthetics, where the expressive power of the image itself is prioritised, without seeking too many added effects in conventional cinema through sound effects, dialogues or other devices.

This is why Lois's work is so poetic and lyrical. His proposals incorporate technological innovations to cause very concrete effects in his works, but all of this helps to delve into the issues that concern this creator and that, since his beginnings, have been present in his work.

Lois Patiño, foto de Mario Gutiérrez Cru

Lois Patiño has always been interested in the relationship of the individual with the landscape and how it can modulate our way of behaving in society and determine our idiosyncrasy. To what extent are we dependent on our environment? How is culture defined by its connection to the landscape? These and other questions plague the author's work in which many contemplative images abound.

In addition, Lois presented us in scoop the trailer for his latest feature-long film "Lúa vermella" that a few days after the masterclass was officially presented at the Berlinale - International Film Festival in Berlin 2020.