Art Madrid'26 – SHIRAS GALERÍA TRUSTS IN LOCAL ART

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.

 


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.