Art Madrid'26 – THE EXPECTED ONE PROJECT OF ART MADRID 17

THE EXPECTED ONE PROJECT OF ART MADRID 17

Jan 26, 2017

art madrid

 

Curated by Carlos Delgado Mayordomo, the proposal talks about concepts as territory, displacement and identity. The selection includes these artists: Rubén Martín de Lucas, Mariajosé Gallardo, Irene Cruz, Renato Costa, Acaymo S. Cuesta, Keke Vilabelda, Eloy Arribas and Ernesto Rancaño.

 

Rubén Martín de Lucas. Genesis 1.28. Creced and Multiplied. Circles Action in the landscape. Photography. Pigmented inks on siliconized microporous paper on 3mm methacrylate mounted on dibond. 120 x 150 cm. Ed.5 + PA. 2017

 

Rubén Martín de Lucas (Madrid, 1977) with the BAT gallery Alberto Cornejo (Madrid), Engineer studies by the Polytechnic University of Madrid but declines to exercise the engineering to dedicate itself completely to art. Member of the multidisciplinary group Boa Mistura, group of artists with roots in graffiti that has intervened among others in the National Museum of Art Reina Sofía, Casa Encendida, International Festival of Arts of Castilla Leon.

 

The main obsession of the artist it is to reduce the forms to the essential, emphasizing the expressive force of graphics, fragments of collages or of the big planes, conceived as zones that allow to concentrate the information of the art piece that should reach the viewer. His works are not simple photographs because he modifies them by painting on them with oil or by creating collages with different images.

 

 

Mariajosé Gallardo. Painting cost time and money - Oil, enamel and gold leaf on canvas - 100 x 81 cm - 2016

 

 

Mariajosé Gallardo (Villaf. De los Barros, Badajoz, 1978), participates with Espacio Olvera (Seville). Graduate in Fine Arts in the specialty of Design and Engraving, by the University of Seville. We can highlight awards such as the Focus Abengoa, the presence of her work in numerous foundations or her individual exhibition in the CAAC (Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art).

 

Throughout her different projects, Mariajosé Gallardo, has built her own plastic vocabulary and has made her works easily recognizable. In its representative lexicon are always present emblems, symbols, religious motives, esoteric, heraldry, ex-votos or reliquaries; she offers the possibility of thinking the painting from different parameters not only by the strictly plastic or aesthetic point of view.
 

 

 

 Irene Cruz. The Muses - Photograph - 40 x 60 cm - 2016

 

 

Irene Cruz (Madrid, 1987) with the gallery Fifty Dots Gallery (Barcelona), an artist very recognized in the contemporary artistic world. Degree in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Advertising and Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication. She obtained the International Master EFTI, specializing in Conceptual photography and artistic creation. She currently lives and works in Berlin, and she has made more than 250 photography exhibitions, video art and video installations around the world, highlighting such places as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the BB.AA Circle in Madrid and the New York Art Project Art Space.

 

 

Renato Costa. Tan-Gentes -  Oil on canvas - 140 x 140 cm - 2016

   

 

Renato Costa (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1974) that participates with Javier Silva Gallery (Valladolid) He began his profession in his father ?attelier. After graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in University Complutense of Madrid, he moved to that city until the present time. His work is defined by expressing intensely the emotions through its technical and thematic characteristics. The key issues are the relationship between the past and the present, not only the personal but also the collective. Figuration, subjectivity and open emotions, converging in his work into a more conceptual art.

 

 

Acaymo S.Cuesta. Preámbulo - Photographed on photopolymer plate. Black offset ink. Super alpha paper. Polyptych composed of 7 engravings
   

 

Acaymo S.Cuesta (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1983) with the La Isla Gallery (Madrid). Graduate in Fine Arts, studied the Master of Artistic Production. He has exhibited individually in the Gallery No Place of Quito, Ecuador, the Gallery of Art U.L.P.G.C of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria and in Foundation Mapfre of Tenerife. He has participated in collective exhibitions in T.E.A. (Tenerife Spaces of the Arts), in Camino Largo 31, La Laguna, Tenerife, Estudio Andrés Delgado, Madrid, in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina and at the School of Design of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, among others.

 

 

Keke Vilabelda. Bone and concrete 4 - - 100 x 70 cm - 2016

 

 

Keke Vilabelda (Valencia, 1986) participant with Kir Royal Gallery (Madrid). Graduated in Fine Arts at the Polytechnic University of San Carlos, Valencia. He has exhibited individually in galleries such as the Kir Royal Gallery in Valencia, the Rodríguez Gallery in Poland, Plecto Gallery and Contemporary Lokus in Medellín, or the Coldharbour London Gallery in London. He has also participated in collective exhibitions such as, “Injuve with the young creation” in the Sala Amadis, Madrid. “Languages in Paper” at the Fernando Pradilla Gallery or the Beautiful New World, International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Nanjin.

 

 

Eloy Arribas. Sin título - Oil and collage on canvas - 100 x 81 cm - 2016  

 

 

Eloy Arribas (Valladolid, 1991) with Silves Arte Contemporáneo (Huércal-Overa, Almería) Painting, he finished his training with a Master’s Degree in Teacher Training. He has exhibited individually in Salamanca in the Space 3K Art and DA2, in Almería in the Gallery Mojácar Factory and in Valladolid in the Gallery Javier Silva. He is currently planning two other exhibitions, one in Madrid. She has participated in a large number of collective exhibitions such as “Flashes” at the Cultural Center of La Carolina, Jaén, and in “Open Studio” with Mabel Esteban and Brin Magenta at Escorpión Producciones, Salamanca.

 

 

 Ernesto Rancaño. Sombras del ayer - Mixed media (Light boxes) - 35 x 6 cm - 2016

 

 

Ernesto Rancaño (Havana, Cuba, 1968) participates with South Border Gallery (Beirut, Lebanon). He studied at the National School of Plastic Arts from 1987 to 1991, where he graduated in the specialty of Painting and Drawing. He obtained the First Prize in the Contest of Posters sponsored and summoned by the CETSS, Havana, Cuba. His works are in permanent collections in Panama, Mexico, Jamaica and Spain. Also, he has participated in numerous collective exhibitions. Since 1995 he has been a member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). Some of his individual exhibitions are “Karma” at the Cuba Pavilion in Havana or “Half of my life” in 2012.

 

 

 

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ART MADRID’26 INTERVIEW PROGRAM. CONVERSATIONS WITH ADONAY BERMÚDEZ


The work of Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) is situated within a genealogy of contemporary art that interrogates the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent, placing artistic practice on a threshold where nature, time, and perception converge. His research begins with an apparently minor geomorphological phenomenon—the traces left in the sand by the action of the tides—and transforms it into a poetic device for sensitive observation of the landscape. The temporal restriction imposed by low tide functions not only as a technical constraint but also as a conceptual structure that organizes the creative process and aligns it with an ethic of radical attention and presence.

Far from approaching the landscape as a mere backdrop or stage, Castaño recognizes in the maritime environment a generative system that precedes all human intervention. The sea, wind, and light produce autonomous records that he translates pictorially, shifting authorship toward a practice of listening and mediation.

The territory—initially asturian and progressively extended to other geographical contexts—functions as a material archive and situated memory. Each work becomes an unrepeatable index of a specific place and moment, revealing the fragility of natural cycles without resorting to explicit rhetoric of denunciation. In this way, Iyán Castaño’s painting operates as an active pause, a gesture of suspension that allows us to experience the world’s constant transformation from a sensitive and reflective proximity.


Open waters. 14-04-24. Expanded graphic on canvas. 2024. Detail.


In your practice, you work under the time constraint imposed by low tide. How does this temporal limit shape your creative process?

Low tide profoundly conditions my working method, but it does not function merely as a time limit; rather, it is the axis around which the entire project is structured. There is a prior phase in which I study meteorological conditions and the possible climatic variations of a specific day; based on this, I know whether I will be able to work and with which materials.

Once on the beach, during low tide, I have a very limited window—sometimes barely two hours or even less—in which I must move through the space searching for existing traces. If I find one, I intervene in it; if not, I must move on to another beach. After the intervention, I have to remove it quickly before the sea returns and erases every trace. In a way, these works transform the ripples of sand—those forms that are essentially ephemeral—into something permanent.


Where the sea is born. 15-09-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. Rodiles Beach, Asturias. 2025.


How does the meteorological and maritime environment—the unpredictability of the sea, wind, light, and tide—become a co-author of your pieces?

I do not consider the environment a co-author in the traditional sense, but rather the true author of the traces I work with. I am interested in understanding nature as a great creator: through tides, waves, wind, and light, the sand generates forms that are in constant regeneration. In order to create my works, the sea must first have created its own.

From there, using acrylics, oils, waxes, or sprays, I attempt to translate into the work my sensations and emotions in front of the sea at that specific moment. Whether it is winter or summer, cloudy or sunny, a small cove or an expansive beach, all of these context conditions result and become imprinted in the work.


Sand Ripples. 07-04-21. Expanded graphic on canvas. 189 x 140 cm. Niembro Estuary. Asturias. 2021.


Your work is closely tied to the Asturian territory—beaches, coastal forests, the cove of La Cóndia. What role do place, topography, local identity, and geographic memory play in your practice?

Place is everything in my project. Asturias was the point of departure and the territory where my gaze was formed. I have been working along this line for seven years, and over time I have come to understand that each trace is inseparable from the specific site and the exact day on which it is produced.

From there, I felt the need to expand the map and begin working in other territories. So far, I have developed works in Senegal, Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands, Indonesia, and elsewhere—and in each case, the result is completely different. The sea that bathes those coasts, the arrangement of the rocks, the morphology of the beach, or even the animals that inhabit it generate unique traces, impossible to reproduce elsewhere. This specificity of territory—its topography and geographic memory—is inscribed in each work in a singular, inseparable, and unrepeatable way.


Mangata. 05-11-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 190 x 130 cm. Sorraos Beach. Llanes. 2025.


To what extent are climate change, rising sea levels, altered tidal cycles, or coastal erosion present—or potentially present—as an underlying reflection in your work?

My work does not originate from an ecological intention or a direct form of protest. If there is a reflection on the environment, it emerges indirectly, by bringing people closer to the landscape, inviting them to observe attentively and to develop a more empathetic relationship with the environment they inhabit. Beaches are in constant transformation, but I do not seek to fix the landscape; rather, I attempt to convey the experience of being in front of it. In this sense, each work is like a small sea that one can take home.


Tree of Life. 19-02-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 50 x 70 cm. El Puntal Beach. Asturias. 2025.


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

In my work there is very little planning in terms of the final result, but there is a very precise preliminary planning. Before going to the beach, I monitor the time of low tide, wave height, wind, and weather conditions; based on this, I decide which beach to go to. Even so, when I arrive, I still do not know what work I am going to make. It is there that I determine which material to use, which color to apply, and where the intervention will take place. Many times, the environment simply does not allow work on that day, and chance becomes an essential element of these works. Error, in turn, becomes a new possibility if one learns how to work with it.







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