MediaLab Prado faces like every December a difficult challenge: to summarise in a day the work of a whole year and share it with the citizens. With this premise, the essential date on the agenda is approaching. The 14th you can not miss “One day in a year. Annual MediaLab Prado Festival ”. With an intense and varied program of activities, the centre opens its doors to families, curious and neighbours with the purpose of turning this pre-Christmas event into an encounter of exchange, knowledge and entertainment designed for everyone: from 0 to 99 years.

For the little ones, MediaLab Prado has created a special program to stimulate all the senses. Starting with music storytellers, followed by Japanese percussion classes, going through performances that recover the poems of García Lorca, Alberti or Gloria Strong. And that's not all, because there will also be room for fantasy and imagination in activities that involve body and mind. Some of these workshops are run by Blanca Helga, a children's illustrator specialising in play-books for children that she edits in the publishing house "Hopitihop" founded by herself. With Blanca, kids can create fantastic characters from cut-outs and collages, as well as start their first artist book with digital tools. And paying attention to body expression, there will also be an experimentation workshop on the body and the way we understand it, by the hand of Giz&Gif.

The connection between art and technology will be available to visitors with an immersive virtual reality experience throughout most of the day. This proposal is in charge of the Synthetic Realities Laboratory (LabRS), one of the centre’s workgroups that investigates the development of these virtual environments. On the other hand, there will be a presentation of all the projects carried out throughout the year, among which we highlight "Dark Light", the result of collaboration with Debajo del Sombrero, BIVO and "Autofabricantes". The first one will show the result of the residences carried out in the centre by autistic artists selected by the association Debajo del Sombrero throughout 2019, with projects arising from naturalness and spontaneity without conditioning. For its part, BIVO is an initiative that seeks to raise awareness about the need for responsible energy consumption, while investigating the manufacture of prototypes that allow the generation of energy through human movement. “Autofabricantes” is a space to investigate the technological advances applied to the elaboration of prostheses through open source, in addition to maintaining a community of exchange and support between participants and families, under the guidance and contribution of the “Exando una mano” group.

Works by Andrés Fernández, "Dark Light"

And you could not miss the use of the square. In addition to breakfast with some ‘roscon’ and hot chocolate as the first thing to open the day, from 6 p.m. the LED facade will be available to visitors, first with an interactive game of ping pong, and then a sample of the projects created for this device throughout the year by institutes, universities and academies.

This is just a preview of everything to enjoy the following Saturday in a meeting designed for everyone to participate. We invite you to consult the rest of the programming HERE and make a place on the agenda for this essential appointment.

Alexander Grahovsky

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARISOL SALANOVA. INTERVIEW PROGRAM. ART MADRID’25

Alexander Grahovsky (Alicante, 1980) begins with a chaotic or random process, similar to collecting images and creating collages from scenes that capture his interest, which he can then recreate as he pleases. His works explore themes such as the unknown, death, and animals, often drawing parallels with toys and incorporating recurring characters along with elements like floating stones. Narrative plays a crucial role in his paintings; the surrealist aspect emerges from the way he constructs a non-linear story. Scenes overlap, appear in different phases across various sections of each painting, and invite the viewer’s eye to roam through the composition. His work contains references to classical painting and cinema, making its interpretation dependent on the viewer's personal background and emotional state. The central thread of his art conveys that, despite life’s hardships, we all continue to celebrate in some way.

The Lighthouse at the End of the Ocean. 2024. Mixed media. 190 x 140 cm.

What role does experimentation play in your creative process?

Experimentation plays a fundamental role in my entire creative process on two levels: technical and narrative. On a technical level, because I allow myself a range of liberties or aesthetic whims that turn the act of painting itself into a game—something enjoyable where, in a way, anything is possible. On a narrative level, it’s about how I build stories, as there is no script or main idea holding everything together. Instead, starting from a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, I try to construct a story that intertwines, compelling the viewer, in some sense, to contribute their own interpretation or create their own narrative.

What are your references?

My influences range from classical painting, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or The Ghent Altarpiece, to more contemporary artists like Hurvin Anderson and Dominique Fung, including Hopper, Hockney, and Leonora Carrington, among countless others. All these artistic influences blend with others from cinema, including the films of Parajanov and the director of Midsommar. Particularly, Midsommar has been quite influential in my work for its distinctive aesthetic. Additionally, the world of comics plays a role, particularly the work of Moebius, especially his more surrealist science fiction illustrations. Video games are another source of inspiration, especially in how scenes are depicted—everything is flattened, as if it were a screen or the backdrop of a theater stage, reminiscent of mid-to-late-90s graphic adventure games.

A Brief Story of an Embrace. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 33 x 41 cm.

How do you create the distinct—and sometimes recurring—characters in your paintings?

The characters develop as the body of work evolves, as if each painting were part of a larger story yet to be told. As I began working in this style, I noticed that many of them reappeared, and when I reused them or made them part of new pieces, I was already considering what I had previously painted about them, as well as what had happened to them in other works. For example, Death has transformed from being a skeleton that might seem to bring bad news into a somewhat mocking or humorous figure wearing a party hat. We also find the Devil, the Magician, and the Red House, which serves as a refuge or a pilgrimage site where characters often end up—or could end up. Then there’s the Black Cat, which initially appeared simply as a warning symbol, as if telling the other characters to stay alert to what’s happening around them, but later became a kind of measure of time: in larger pieces, it typically appears three times. I enjoy playing with the ambiguity of whether it’s three different cats or the same cat appearing at three different points in the story. In this way, the characters help weave a narrative and create connections between all the pieces, forming a shared universe to which they all belong.

The Crow, the Stag, the Grapes, and the Wine I Spilled. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 60 x 74 cm.

When did you transition to the garden series, and why?

In 2022, I decided to gather all the surreal scenes and sketches that were scattered around my studio and explore what would happen if they coexisted in the same space—what would happen if all these seemingly disconnected elements were placed on the same plane. In this case, the plane is the canvas, and the setting is the garden. It’s here that the garden, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and all the imagery rooted in our collective unconscious become visible. From that point, I chose to keep pulling the thread of this story to see where it would lead me. This is when all the characters begin to emerge, allowing me to create a space where I can play and find creative freedom that I hadn’t experienced in my previous work.

You Should Break My Heart in January 2024. Oil, spray paint, and colored pencils on canvas. 81 x 100 cm.

What connection does this phase of your work have with your past in the world of comics?

This phase of my work draws a lot from all the years I spent reading comics, from when I was a young child to trying to break into the American comic industry. I was close, so close, but it didn’t materialize. The truth is that, in the end, what interested me more than the drawing itself were the more experimental narratives, like those of John Hankiewicz, Dave McKean, or people of that kind. In that sense, I’m mainly influenced by the way stories are constructed. They are not sequential panels where A leads to B, and B leads to C. Rather, the visual journey through the pieces is like a comic page where you can jump from the first panel to the seventh and then return to the second, and depending on the order you choose, the story will unfold in one way or another. It’s true that, for example, what you often find are different fragments of the same scene: a beginning, a middle, a climax, and a resolution, but they are often surrounded by other scenes that either influence the events in each smaller scene or simply coexist in the same universe. In that sense, I’m also very interested in the idea of a shared universe, right? That all these pieces, this entire body of work, form part of a larger story that seems to want to tell itself, one that still doesn’t know where it’s going but is starting to find its place and path. Like the characters that started simply appearing and now each one has its own backstory.

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