It is impossible to be nearer, physically and symbolically. Portuguese artists and professionals can consider Art Madrid "their fair". On this occasion, the Art Lounge and Arte Periférica galleries, both from Lisbon, and Paulo Nunes Arte Contemporânea, from Vila Franca de Xira, participate in the General Program of the fair. The Nuno Sacramento gallery is part of ONE PROJECT program.

João Santos

Sin título, 2017

Plexiphoto

100 x 70cm

Art Lounge, under the direction of Sofía Tenreiro Da Cruz, intends to disseminate the work of international artists recognized for the quality of their work. Convinced of the importance of cultural exchange, the gallery tries to show in Portugal foreign artists still little known in the country and, in a second phase, aims to promote the internationalization of contemporary national plastic arts. The Art Lounge proposal for Art Madrid'18 is multiple: Uiso Alemany, Carmen Calvo, Fabio Camarotta, Fernando Coelho, Vinita Dasgupta, Daniel Merlin, Brice Munier, João Noutel and Florian Raiss.

Carmen Calvo, “Alegría es uno de sus adornos más vulgares”, técnica mixta, collage y fotografía.

The work of Carmen Calvo always deserves a break. National Prize of Plastic Arts 2013, Calvo is a reference in the contemporary conceptualization of the fragment. Her work has an essence of finding and reminiscence and materials such as cement, marble, glass, clay, plaster and a long etcetera are part of her compositions that have been renewed over the decades in an evolution that led her to represent Spain in the Pavilion of the Venice Biennial of 1997 with Joan Brossa. Next to her, the colorful and almost childlike forms of Brice Mounier, the materic portraits of Daniel Merlin or the social art of Vinita Dasgupta that wants the viewer feels and participates in her images, in the process of discovery, the synthesis of personal feelings, the color that inspires her and the technique used.

Isabelle Faria

Purity-Finally time had come IV, 2017

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

Isabelle Faria

Purity-Finally time had come VI, 2017

Oil on canvas

40 x 40cm

Also in Lisbon, Arte Periférica has been promoting international contemporary art in the city for 25 years. Directed by Anabela Antunes and Pedro Reigadas also bet on an ambitious collective formed by the artists Isabel Sabino, Isabelle Faria, Jessica Burrinha, Moses Duarte and Sylvie Lei.

We highlight here the contrast between the work of the French Isabelle Faria, graduated in Fine Arts, Painting, Drawing and Video at the Central School Saint Martins in London in 2003 and focused in a style of drawing and painting very expressive, fast, almost gestural and full of acid humor to represent the tormented part of the human being: his vices, his fears, his sins... In contrast with the work of the Asian abstract painter Sylvie Lei who, with an almost ethereal palette and inspired by the effects of neon light and the screens produce paintings that deal with the problematic nature of virtual reality in the contemporary social context and its way of changing our space-time.

Mário Macilau

Sem Título, 2017

Mixed media on canvas

80 x 120cm

The Galería Paulo Nunes Arte Contemporânea, located in the historic center of Vila Franca de Xira, returns to Art Madrid. Founded in December 2010, its main objective is the dissemination of consolidated and emerging artists, national and international, in all disciplines. Not only do they organize their own exhibitions and take their artists to fairs all over the world, but they also give advice to collectors. One of its bets is to close alliances with other international galleries to promote their artists looking for an exchange between the creators and their works. Rui Dias Monteiro, Mário Macilau, Gilvan Nunes, Ana Pais Oliveira and Manuel Patinha are the creators chosen by them to premiere at the Madrid Art Week.

The work of the African Mário Macilau, documentary photographer who also experiments with painting, aims to make visible the social conditions in his country and the African continent. He began in the world of photography in 2003, but it was not until 2007 when he devoted himself professionally and has already participated in international exhibitions such as the Biennial of African Photography of Bamako 2011, the BESTphoto 2011 of Portugal, the VI Edition of the Chobi Mela Photo Festival of Bangladesh 2011, the Photospring of Beijing 2011 or the Lakes Photo I and II edition. In addition, he is a member of the committee of artists and curators of the photography festival organized by the Goethe Institute in Africa. We also highlight the work of Rui Dias Monteiro, photographer and poet who mixes these disciplines creating images with great conceptual content, graphic ideas that he intervenes with pure painting on photographic paper to create unique pieces.

The Nuno Sacramento Gallery, based in Aveiro (Portugal), participates in the ONE PROJECT program with a solo-show by Bernardo Media, but we will talk about this in detail later.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26

Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

PERFORMANCE: OSCURECER UN PAPEL. BY ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

March 5 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

Nocturnality. Installation. Rocío Valdivieso..

Oscurecer un papel forms part of a series of actions in which the artist engages in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. Within this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is transformed when spoken aloud, assuming a different form in the act of articulation. The texts stem from an ongoing investigation into materiality, space, the relationships between body and matter, writing, the sculptural, and a sustained interest in the exploration of voice and orality.

The material from which Oscurecer un papel is constructed consists of a collection of purchase receipts the artist has been accumulating over time. The printed text they contain, together with the action of bringing them into proximity with a heat source—thereby activating the thermal paper on which they are produced—generates meanings that revolve around the notions of consumption and wear.

Rocío Valdivieso. Latent Aura. Performance documentation.

ABOUT ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an MA in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) and a BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. She was a Fundación Carolina fellow from 2022 to 2023. She currently co-directs Errática. Laboratory of Processes and Critique in Madrid, alongside Romina Casile.

She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at the Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and in 2020 participated in the Intensive Curatorial Program of Proyecto PAC at Galería Gachi Prieto, Buenos Aires. She received the Visual Arts Promotion Award at the 4th Visual Arts Week of the Ente Cultural de Tucumán. She was awarded an AUGM scholarship for an exchange residency at UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. She also participated in the International Residency Program La Ira de Dios and in the Acéfala Galería Residency for Argentine artists.