The world is on alert. Since time ago, we live in a permanent paradox, a situation of contrast that obeys two impulses: the one that leads us to keep our economies growing and the one that warns us that the excesses committed will have consequences. Far from focusing on finding a balance between the two, we tend to feed both forces independently. Thus, the two ends of this rope, which is our world, tense more and more until, either one of the ends yields, or it ends up breaking in half.

Nick Sayers, “Coke bottles sphere”, 2010

The Climate Action Summit that started this week has been presented as an ultimatum to the planet. The responsibility to take urgent measures to combat climate change and acquire a real commitment to effective policies weighs on our conscience as a species. Undoubtedly, more damage to the environment has been caused in the last century than in the rest of our history. And yet, we seem unable to act accordingly, to change our habits, our frantic demand, to take care of where we live.

Installation by Maja Weiss in CIFF, 17 tonnes of used clothes.

To raise awareness about this problem, the communication channels diversify, and the messages come from different sources. Many artists have made of ecological responsibility their leit motiv. Aiming to get their speech as far as possible and reach as many people as possible, the authors strive to explore new contemporary languages that cause an impact and call the viewer's attention. The objective is clear: to open our eyes to a reality that affects us entirely, and that will require everyone's commitment to fighting back.

Vanessa Barragão, “Coral Garden”, 2019

Many creators underline this dramatic situation by using waste materials to carry out their works. The reuse of plastic elements and other objects recovered from beaches, streets or parks reveals the massive amount of waste that we are capable of producing and the lack of responsibility by spreading trash anywhere. These actions invite us to reflect on the spiral of consumption we live in and the brevity of the useful life of objects, which are quickly replaced by new ones. The transition towards the "unusable" is increasingly shorter, and everything becomes volatile and futile in our capitalist society. This has given rise to "Upcycled art", a movement that offers a second life to residues and transforms them into works of art.

Upcycled Art was labelled for the first time in 2002, in the work “From the cradle to the cradle. Redesigning the way we do things” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Although the reuse and fusion of materials are not new in the art world, what is new is the purpose, essentially aimed at creating something beautiful from the waste and in evidencing the consumption abuses we are victims of.

Olafur Eliasson, “Ice Watch”, 2018, photo: Matt Alexander/PA Wire

Other authors focus on large-scale works that emphasise global warming. The Danish Olafur Eliasson created in 2018 an installation for the Tate Modern in London (later replicated in other cities), where he arranged huge blocks of ice that simulate the large fragments that gradually detach from the glaciers and melt in the sea. The artwork was called "Ice Watch" ("Ice Watch") and, as expected, it ended turned into a large pool of water. This artist, to whom the Guggenheim Museum will dedicate a monographic exhibition in February, has reflected on the unstoppable impact of this rise in temperatures, and laments the total disappearance of the Ok glacier, until recently located northeast of Reykjavik.

Francis Pérez, “Caretta Caretta Trapped”, 2017 Photo Contest, Nature, Singles, 1st prize.

On the other hand, a large number of photographers, and especially those specialising in nature reports, have brought to light dramatic images in which the species suffer from the overabundance of plastics that pollute their ecosystems. According to the UN report on the climate published in March this year, biodiversity is one of the most threatened riches on the planet, and it is estimated that there is a risk of extinction that affects 42% of terrestrial invertebrates and 25% of the marine invertebrates. That is why it is not strange that photographs like this are increasingly more frequent and have become for many authors sensitised with this problem a way of denunciation and awareness.

Hopefully, societies will take measures to stop and, as far as possible, reverse this situation. We must investigate new economic models that take advantage of resources responsibly and do not rely exclusively on constant growth and overproduction.

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.