Shiras Galería is committed to local art in Valencia and in its proposal for this edition of Art Madrid will exhibit work by five Valencian artists and one Zamorano artist based in Valencia.

Founded by its current artistic director Sara Joudi, Shiras Galería gives visibility to local art in Valencia, as well as national and international art, and does so by offering a proposal for inter-generational dialogue between consolidated artists and young emerging artists with great potential for projection. Shiras Galería is a member of the Consortium of Spanish Contemporary Art Galleries, LaVAC (Association of Contemporary Art Galleries of the Valencian Community) and the Valencia Excellence Association.

Toño Barreiro (Zamora, 1965) participates in Art Madrid with the proposal "FLEXIA". Defined by the critic David Barro as: Toño Barreiro proposes to "visualize the skeleton of thought" and for this he uses the line in a sinuous and organic way (Dibujos infinitos) or as a constructor of flat geometries, which combines and moves in structures of inspired three-dimensionality (Flexia). Through new technologies and creative processes, the artist in his most recent creations, develops a multidisciplinary work in which he breaks completely with the traditional frame, making a symbiosis between painting and sculpture.

Toño Barreiro

Dibujos infinitos, 2018

Tinta plana sobre papel fabriano

90 x 75cm

Juan Olivares (Catarroja, 1973) is an interdisciplinary artist who works between China and Spain. This year he is participating in the fair with the new series "Beyond", recently exhibited in Shiras, where he shows us his ambivalence between the poetics of the Eastern world and the chromatism of Western abstract expressionism. He makes his collages by cutting out fragments of vinyl paint on paper and combining them in such a way that the formal limits of the pictorial are lost. For the artist, abstraction is the search for the essential in the work.

Horacio Silva (Valencia, 1950), is included in Art Madrid's proposal with his recent project "intro-versions". Prestigious artist and professor of the UPV. In his work, mimesis and colour come together in a clear transition towards abstraction in which the element of "unity" makes it an explosive display of emotional tensions, from which his unmistakable personal stamp emerges.

Josep Tornero

St, 2019

Oil on canvas

100 x 100cm

Horacio Silva

Mi isla preferida, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

155 x 120cm

The artist Josep Tornero (Valencia,1973), uses his masterful command of classical technique in a contemporary way and with it constructs a work in which he travels through the image both from the real and the imaginary where we find a constant concern for the material element that configures it. Her black and white oils, which resemble a blurred photograph, have a background of social denunciation. This makes her paintings unmistakable.

Nanda Botella

Serie grietas franjas y color, 2018

Mixed media

70 x 70cm

Shiras' exhibition proposal for Art Madrid is completed with the most recent works by Nanda Botella and Cristina Gamón. Stripes, colours and cracks merge in the work of Nanda Botella (Valencia,1960), who expresses her deepest feelings through a metaphysical language. The colour in its maximum vivacity is a fundamental element in the current work of the Valencian artist, in contrast to the work based on black and white of her previous stage. On the other hand, the young artist Cristina Gamón (Valencia, 1987), makes a show of color on surfaces of metacrilate, obtaining diffused and transparencies that remember to primary organisms submerged in aqueous spaces located in abysmal depths.

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.