Art Madrid'26 – THE PORTUGUESE GALLERIES OF ART MADRID FAIR

While Art Lounge repeats in Art MAdrid, Nuno Sacramento and Arte Periférica are premiered in this edition with new artists and others of recognized trajectory. An opportunity to get closer to the Portuguese art market.

 

 

Papartus. Untitled - Mixed media on canvas - 200 x 200 cm - 2014

 


The gallery Nuno Sacramento was founded in the city of Aveiro (Portugal) in 2003. In 2009 the gallery changes its headquarters to Ílhavo, where it has a space specially designed to be a contemporary art gallery. Nuno Sacramento performs six individual and collective exhibitions per year, and publishes catalogs about its artists. In addition, he actively participates in museums and cultural centers in many Portuguese cities and around the world, highlighting those made in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Havana and those of the CEART Museum in Madrid.

 

Nuno Sacramento comes to Art Madrid’17 with a monograph by the artist Papartus, who returns to the cultural scene in Madrid with recent works of large format. Some of the artist's pieces are in public collections such as the Huarte Museum in Navarra, the Malaga Architects Association and the Pamplona City Hall, among others.

 

 

Joâo Noutel. Untitled - Mixed technique on MDF - 130 x 68 cm - 2016

 


Art Lounge Gallery, one of the veteran foreign galleries in Art Madrid, selects artists from many different origins, defending the importance of cultural exchange and promoting the work of artists little known in Portugal. Its intention is to enhance the internationalization of the contemporary plastic arts.

 

The gallery will exhibit in its stand the work of artists with very different lines, like Fabio Camarotta, Ana Michaelis, Joâo Noutel, the Spanish Carmen Calvo, Angela Bassano and Felix Farfán.

 

The work of Farfán (Brazil, 1960), for example, has enjoyed great recognition in South America, especially in his native Brazil, in the 80's of last century. His work has participated in numerous collective and individual exhibitions in Brazil, Brasilia, Recife, Olinda and Sao Paulo. In his art works, with a style very similar to Carmen Calvo's, the artist mixes drawing with the assemblage and collage, traditional symbols and popular culture in colorful mixed techniques on which embroiery, rips and colors to create their particular universe.

 

 

Camilo Alves. Zé Povinho according to Vetrúvio. Oil on canvas. 100x100 cm. 2014

 

Arte Periférica Gallery was founded in 1991 by Anabela Antunes and Pedro Reigadas and, since 1994, occupies a special place in the popular Cultural Center of Belem, on the outskirts of Lisbon, where it also has a shop of Fine Arts products. During 25 years of activity it has been outstanding for promoting the work of young artists from inside and outside Portugal, with special dedication to Spanish and Asian artists. Arte Periférica has imposed an ambitious agenda with 12 annual exhibitions.

 

His proposal for Art Madrid includes the work of Angela Sanchez, Eva Navarro, Eva Armisén, Camilo Alves and Isabel Sabino.

 

Isabel Sabino (Lisbon, 1955) has exhibited individually in Lisbon on numerous occasions, with Arte Periférica Gallery but also with the Galería Novo Século and at the Casa Museo Jorge Vieira. He has participated in collective exhibitions such as the Biennial of Lagos or the Biennial of Vila Nova de Cerveira. Her work, eminently on paper, is expressed in mixed techniques, watercolors and drawing to talk about an almost surrealist figuration in which the scenes - ilusions , allegories and dreams- appear fulled of color spots, geometric structures and apparently delocalized elements in a Painting full of energy.

 

 

 


The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst


POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.



In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.



Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.



Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.



The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.



This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.



The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.