With 12 years of experience, PROYECTOR has established itself as a reference festival in our country dedicated entirely to video-creation, a discipline that continues to win followers and attracts many contemporary creators inside and outside our borders. Video is, in fact, one of the most widespread means of expression in our days. The power of the image in movement is undeniable, and the public demands new artistic languages that are in tune with their habits of cultural consumption. Contemporary art has surrendered to the attraction of this complex and dynamic technique, although it still strives to carve a niche among the traditional disciplines in the most consolidated exhibition circuits. For this reason, PROYECTOR was born, to give voice to so many authors who have found in video-art an ideal channel to hold their creative projects.

PROYECTOR aspires to offer a real vision of the international cultural fabric and the most recent contemporary trends around this speciality, with an ambitious program of activities held in different parts of the capital. Since it was first launched, this initiative has also wanted to be known abroad, and every year, the participation of international authors increases. From Japan to Argentina, passing through Israel, Austria, Brazil or the United States, to name just a few of them, the representation of foreign creators reveals the enormous interest that exists in the sphere of contemporary production in this discipline, which this way becomes a formal vehicle of an expressive language shared worldwide.

The next edition will take place from September 11th to 22nd, 2019 in a packed schedule of events that will bring together more than 50 artists in 14 different venues in Madrid. As every year, the program will host the invited artists along with those selected in the call for projects opened a few months ago and in which more than 400 artists from around 20 countries participated. The result is a rich panorama of the most up-to-date video-creation that opens its doors to the whole world, in the path traced by PROYECTOR since its beginnings: to bring art closer to the general public and pay attention to its experimental and committed nature around which the most critical and reflexive artistic discourses are currently built up.

Març Rabal, “Les eines i els dies” (frame)

In addition to the usual talks, projection cycles and workshops, the 12th edition of PROYECTOR will also host several site-specific projects created for the festival thanks to the program of artistic residences carried out in collaboration with Conde Duque, The Instant Foundation, Medialab Prado and Extension AVAM. Another novelty is the participation of the INELCOM Collection, which will open its doors to publicise its impressive funds dedicated to video-creation and technological art, as well as the "endorsements" where renowned international professionals will curate the artistic proposals coming from Europe and Asia. Also, we must highlight the award that the collector Teresa Sapey has granted to Març Rabal, to be delivered during the festival, and whose video-installation work will be on show in September.

Julieta Caputo y Ariel Uzal, “Un derrumble posible” (frame)

PROYECTOR 2019 promises to surprise everybody with its novelties. We look forward to the arrival of this essential event that for 12 days will conquer major spaces of the city, such as CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, INELCOM Collection, Conde Duque, Cruce, El Instante Fundación, AVAM Extension, Cervantes Institute, Medialab Prado, Quinta del Sordo, Room Alcalá 31, Room Equis, Room The Eagle, Secuencia de Inútiles and Plaza Pública.

The work of Cedric Le Corf (Bühl, Germany, 1985) is situated in a territory of friction, where the archaic impulse of the sacred coexists with a critical sensibility characteristic of contemporary times. His practice is grounded in an anthropological understanding of the origin of art as a foundational gesture: the trace, the mark, the need to inscribe life in the face of the awareness of death.

The artist establishes a complex dialogue with the Spanish Baroque tradition, not through stylistic mimicry, but through the emotional and material intensity that permeates that aesthetic. The theatricality of light, the embodiment of tragedy, and the hybridity of the spiritual and the carnal are translated in his work into a formal exploration, where underlying geometry and embedded matter generate perceptual tension.

In Le Corf’s practice, the threshold between abstraction and figuration is not an opposition but a site of displacement. Spatial construction and color function as emotional tools that destabilize the familiar. An open methodology permeates this process, in which planning coexists with a deliberate loss of control. This allows the work to emerge as a space of silence, withdrawal, and return, where the artist confronts his own interiority.

The Fall. 2025. Oil on canvas.195 × 150 cm.

In your work, a tension can be perceived between devotion and dissidence. How do you negotiate the boundary between the sacred and the profane?

In my work, I feel the need to return to rock art, to the images I carry with me. From the moment prehistoric humans became aware of death, they felt the need to leave a trace—marking a red hand on the cave wall using a stencil, a symbol of vital blood. Paleolithic man, a hunter-gatherer, experienced a mystical feeling in the presence of the animal—a form of spiritual magic and rituals linked to creation. In this way, the cave becomes sacred through the abstract representation of death and life, procreation, the Venus figures… Thus, art is born. In my interpretation, art is sacred by essence, because it reveals humankind as a creator.

Between Dog and Wolf II. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

Traces of the Spanish Baroque tradition can be seen in your work. What do you find in it that remains contemporary today?

Yes, elements of the Spanish Baroque tradition are present in my work. In the history of art, for example, I think of Arab-Andalusian mosaics, in which I find a geometry of forms that feels profoundly contemporary. In Spanish Baroque painting and sculpture, one recurring theme is tragedy: death and the sacred are intensely embodied, whether in religious or profane subjects, in artists such as Zurbarán, Ribera, El Greco, and also Velázquez. I am thinking, for example, of the remarkable equestrian painting of Isabel of France, with its geometry and nuanced portrait that illuminates the painting.

When I think about sculpture, the marvelous polychrome sculptures of Alonso Cano, Juan de Juni, or Pedro de Mena come to mind—works in which green eyes are inlaid, along with ivory teeth, horn fingernails, and eyelashes made of hair. All of this has undoubtedly influenced my sculptural practice, both in its morphological and equestrian dimensions. Personally, in my work I inlay porcelain elements into carved or painted wood.

Between Dog and Wolf I. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

What interests you about that threshold between the recognizable and the abstract?

For me, any representation in painting or sculpture is abstract. What imposes itself is the architectural construction of space, its secret geometry, and the emotion produced by color. It is, in a way, a displacement of the real in order to reach that sensation.

The Anatomical Angel. 2013. Ash wood and porcelain. 90 × 15 × 160 cm.

Your work seems to move between silence, abandonment, and return. What draws you toward these intermediate spaces?

I believe it is by renouncing the imitation of external truth, by refusing to copy it, that I reach truth—whether in painting or in sculpture. It is as if I were looking at myself within my own subject in order to better discover my secret, perhaps.

Justa. 2019. Polychrome oak wood. 240 × 190 × 140 cm.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

It is true that, on occasions, I completely forget the main idea behind my painting and sculpture. Although I begin a work with very clear ideas—preliminary drawings and sketches, preparatory engravings, and a well-defined intention—I realize that, sometimes, that initial idea gets lost. It is not an accident. In some cases, it has to do with technical difficulties, but nowadays I also accept starting from a very specific idea and, when faced with sculpture, wood, or ceramics, having to work in a different way. I accept that.