Art Madrid'23 – POP CULTURE, CONCEPTUAL ART AND STREET ART. GALERÍA HISPÁNICA CONTEMPORÁNEA

Hispánica Contemporánea (based in Madrid and Mexico), one of the veteran galleries in Art Madrid, proposes for this edition a proposal with national and international artists that could be framed within trends such as Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Activism and Neo-Pop in contrast and interaction with other more current artistic trends such as kinetic art, neo-figurative art and street art. Hispánica Contemporánea proposes in its stand a historical journey through purely contemporary discourses and aesthetics.

The pop culture will be very present at Hispánica's booth. We will see it in the pieces "Flat Depth " of the American artist Paul Rousso, who from a flat surface creates volumes, turning a flat object into a three-dimensional one. Rousso, using complex techniques and under a satirical and ironic approach, discards and wrinkles elements such as American dollar bills, candy wrappers and pages from magazines and newspapers, inflating them to extraordinary dimensions.

Paul Rousso

Action Comic Superman March, 2018

Mixed media

92 x 246cm

The artist (also American) Peter Anton, in the wake of Rousso, creates realistic and giant sculptures, but this time food is the protagonist, especially chocolate candies and other sweets. Anton exaggerates the size of food to give it a new meaning; his creative process begins by smelling, dissecting, feeling and deeply studying the food he is going to represent.

The Italian artist Fidias Falaschetti is concerned with other issues related to pop culture such as consumerism and the globalization of the media. Falaschetti, from an ironic and playful point of view, investigates in his work the relationship between digital and analog, appropriating materials and elements or characters from the past and transforming them into contemporary objects. An example of this is his iconic Disney characters in resin covered in aluminium.

Peter Anton

Splendor Variety, 2017

Mixed technique

90 x 90cm

The sculptural installations by the American artist Rafael Barrios and the kinetic pieces in ceramics by Carlos Cruz Díez represent a turning point in the Hispánica booth. In the work of these two artists, both pioneers in their artistic tendencies although with different plastic discourses, color has a fundamental role.

Rafael Barrios plays with geometrical forms, volumes and colour, building his sculptures in a direction totally far from the orthodox, defying the laws of space and generating new perceptive alternatives with his "floating virtual works". Hispánica Contemporánea is the only gallery that represents Rafael Barrios in Spain.

The Venezuelan artist Cruz-Díez conceives color as an autonomous element, which evolves in space and time, without the help of form or support, in a continuous present. In his delicate ceramics of the series "Cromovela", works that we will be able to see in Art Madrid, we observe how the artist takes the kinetic art to its maximum expression in the land of the three-dimensionality.

Rafael Barrios

Mural, 2015

Lacquered steel

160 x 126cm

Xavier Mascaró and Manolo Valdés, two artists with solid careers and with whom Hispánica has been working for years, will show at the Fair a selection of pieces that could be included within the neofigurative trend.

The pieces by Xavier Mascaró that Hispánica will present in Art Madrid, are a sample of the different lines of research with which the French artist has been working since his beginnings. It is worth mentioning that the artist has recently been included in the list of artists of the prestigious Opera gallery and we will be able to see in Art Madrid a selection of his famous sculptures in iron, bronze and corrugated copper combined with his pieces in enameled ceramics.

From the artist Manolo Valdés we will be able to see work on paper of his characteristic representations of elegant and sophisticated "Gentlemen " and "Ladies with pamela " accompanied by small format bronze sculptures.

Xavier Mascaró

Guardián, 2012

Cobre corrugado

175 x 100cm

Mr.Brainwash, iconic street art artist, will bring "street art" to the stand walls. In his works we see again characteristic elements of the aesthetics of American pop culture fused with his personal style.

Exercising an absolute contrast with the work of the urban artist, we find the deep and symbolic paintings of the Basque artist Guillermo Fornés Through a very personal language, the artist wants to transmit "his expressive force, and at the same time, give the work the poetics and subtlety that make up his plastic identity. In this way, he always speaks of the emotion." His large canvases charged with symbolism, awaken timeless emotions and feelings.

Mr. Brainwash

Einstein, 2016

Técnica Mixta sobre metal

50 x 50cm

Guillermo Fornés

Arch Light, 2018

Mixed media on canvas

146 x 114cm

Crowning the stand of Hispánica Contemporánea the monotypes of one of the most influential artists in contemporary conceptual art, the American Mel Bochner, who works exclusively with the gallery Hispánica in Spain and Mexico.

Bochner is, together with Joseph Kosuth, Art & Language, Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Houbler and Robert Barry, responsible for one of the artistic revolutions of the moment. Trained in an artistic environment (his father was an advertising sign painter), his interest has always been focused on the purely conceptual rather than the superficial. Influenced by his father, from an early age he became interested in strictly verbal information and the meaning of words. Little by little, Bochner begins to divest himself of the elements most closely linked to the pictorial (colour, plane, surface) in order to explore the possibilities of the linguistic universe. Later, he recovers colour in his works to make it an indispensable element in his work.

Mel Bochner

Amazing, 2018

Monotype with collage, engraving and reliefs on Twinrocker paper

158.8 x 119.4cm

In art works such as "Blah, Blah, Blah" or "Amazing", the semantics or meaning of the words, varies as we read them. The artist explores the duality between the solitary and private nature of writing and the way in which the final product is exposed openly to the public, bringing together an immense wealth of subjective gradations in language.

 

Fight of Giants relies on figurative art and the character of the Pink Panther to reclaim the democratic genetics of Pop Art and its proximity to the audience, characteristics of an artistic movement inspired by the aesthetics of everyday life and consumer goods of the time. As a "happening" in the heart of the city of Madrid, Fight of Giants advocates for artistic creation in a context where the aesthetic experience is more exciting and better understood by all audiences.

Sixty years ago, Blake Edwards released in Technicolor one of the most unique feature films of the time, which would not only become part of American culture but also the international comedy universe: "The Pink Panther", whose original title was translated into Spanish as "La Pantera Rosa."

Jaime Sancorlo. Desert Patrol, 2023

In 1963, this comedy-thriller entered the bloodstream of the emerging Pop movement in a New York City experiencing the birth of the "Factory" and the rise of Truman Capote. Just like previous editions of this informal field called Battle of Giants (a "non-gallery," a "non-museum," something more than an exhibition, as defined by its creators Gabriel Suarez and Aleix Gordo), The Pink Panther reappears this time as a timeless character capable of questioning and reclaiming the present through its staging.

Sandra Rojo Picón. No9. Blue Pink, 2023

After obtaining the copyright for its reproduction directly from MGM, the commemoration of the character's sixtieth anniversary brings together thirty giant artists who, struggling together, will visually reflect on their socio-cultural present, their artistic and visual context, and their work, around the figure of the iconic pink character. At the same time, the proposal promotes the revision of the context of art itself, wanting to establish new places for the shared experience between the work of art and the observer, going beyond the apathy of the white cubes or those artistic spaces of restricted access belonging to the past.

Illan Argüello. Más chula que el 8, 2023

In this way and demonstrating the bitter heritage typical of British comedy or "pop art", the film was connected to the impulses of the new artistic exploration that was emerging in the streets of the Big Apple, far from the chromatic and gestural abstraction that had occupied the art scene during the previous decade, with figures such as Mark Rothko, Barnet Newman, Willem de Kooning or Jackson Pollock, and which had also moved away from the gaze of the general public. The New York cultural scene was now moving forward in the hands of the film director towards other paths closer to mass culture and its daily life through humor. In his first solo appearance in the Pink Phink chapter, the Pink Panther establishes a colorful battle against the traditional hegemony of the color blue, using all kinds of tricks and strategies to dye the world with his favorite color. In only six minutes in which we could see pictorial inheritances coming from the chromatic universe of Rothko and other abstract creators, the character is introduced in the culture of the politically incorrect.

Iker Serrano. Space Action Panther,2023

The Pink Panther represents irony, discontent or cynicism, clichés of what we know as "British sense of humor" and will always act, throughout all the short films, as a timeless critic, as an inter-generational and individual being capable of conversing with the general public, regardless of their origin, culture or age.

Mario Soria. Pink Biker,2023

Under the apparent atmosphere of humor and comedy of the new interpretations made by the thirty selected giants, there is a world of diverse readings and messages to be discovered, which will be unveiled by the other fundamental agent of any artistic process: the audience.

Fight of Giants gathers this time thirty individual visions for a collective and close reconstruction of its present, where the general public has been invited to participate with total freedom in this exciting process.

From May 25th to 28th. From 11h to 20h.

📍Hotel ONLY You Barquillo.

C/ del Barquillo, 21. Madrid.