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.

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.