The gallery BAT Alberto Cornejo, has been associated to Art Madrid since its beginnings. Therefore, for this fifteenth anniversary, the gallery from Madrid is paying homage to the Fair with a selection of artists who have been key in its trajectory. Some of them have been present in Art Madrid during the fifteen editions.

BAT Alberto Cornejo was one of the 18 galleries that founded Art Madrid in 2005, as a response to the evident need to make visible the work of the galleries in Spain. Since then, its directors and team have been supporting the project, presenting artistic proposals that combine the work of young artists who follow a very contemporary expressive line and pieces by artists with more consolidated careers.

Pepe Puntas

La enredadera, 2019

Mixta sobre tabla

200 x 204cm

David Lechuga

Bañista, 2004

Bronze

44 x 20cm

The artworks of David Lechuga, Diego Canogar and Pepe Puntas, artists with whom BAT Alberto Cornejo has been working for years, are characterized by keeping a timeless aesthetic that still remains in the spotlight of contemporary art. The three artists, nationally recognized and having received countless awards, have works in some important national and international art collections.

Gustavo Díaz Sosa

Caminos divergentes I, 2019

Mixta sobre lino

150 x 150cm

Diego Canogar

Tetramorfo extendido 101 N, 2014

Hierro patinado

145 x 90cm

On the other hand, the exhibition proposal of BAT Alberto Cornejo is completed by three unconditional emerging artists of the gallery: José Ramón Lozano, who returns to his beginnings with his portraits of direct faces and dark backgrounds, Gustavo Díaz Sosa with its colored architectural spaces and Cuban artist Roldán Lauzán, previously featured by the gallery Collage Habana, will make his debut with BAT Alberto Cornejo at the Fair, and whose artworks will make us reflect on the duality of being.

“We have rarely seen such strength in holding the brush as we see in the works of these three artists. With a totally visceral impulse, their paintings are framed within those images that chase you until you find yourself in front of them and fall down", the gallery owners point out.”, comment the gallerists.

José Ramón Lozano

Sin Título (II), 2018

Acrílico sobre tela

120 x 120cm

Roldán Lauzán Eiras

Season III, 2019

Óleo sobre tela

140 x 140cm

These six developed and emerging artists are joined by the German photographer Jorg Karg, who is participating for the first time in the fair with BAT Alberto Cornejo, and the Slovak photographer Mária Švarbová, who will present a very special work, "Absolute Pink Bar ". This piece, with a format of 110 x 100 cm, is the result of an advertising collaboration, and there are only 10 copies in the world. BAT Alberto Cornejo will have one of these pieces in Art Madrid. In this edition, the gallery commits to photography supported by the international projection of these two artists, as they are present in galleries all over the world and with amazing careers despite their youth.

Jorg Karg

One mile light, 2019

Printing by pigment under acrylic glass on aluminum dibond

80 x 76cm

Maria Svarbova

Snow pool, Garden, 2017

Photography

90 x 90cm

At the booth of BAT Alberto Cornejo, the figurative art staged in paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, will have a greater presence than abstract art (with Puntas and Canogar as acting agents), and bright colors and the female figure (either in faces or bodies) will predominate. Gustavo Díaz Sosa, Diego Canogar and Pepe Puntas present works of their artistic life project, with their particular commitment to each piece.

It is worth noting that we can highlight the co-publication of the graphic work "Pont Neuf " by the artist Jorg Karg (image of the official poster of the Fair). The work will be available exclusively at Art Madrid. On the other hand, Roldán Lauzán has made a series of unpublished pieces for Art Madrid, from the series "Hierofante" and "Anatta Vadi ". We can also find in this edition, the catalogues "Futuro Retro " by Švarbová, of very exclusive sale in Spain.

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.