Art Madrid'26 – THE SEDUCTION OF MYSTERY

Miquel Alzueta, Robert Drees, Fucking Art, Alba Cabrera and MH Art Galleries

 

The seduction of the unknown, hidden and mysterious, is one of those things that is hard to describe. Many times we do not even know how that feeling begins, why something becomes so attractive or how it becomes a permanent thought. The mystery can be ineffable, because it is not easy to express it with words and, perhaps due to this verbal difficulty, it is more possible to express it through other languages, such as the language of images, the shapes of visual arts.

Hugo Alonso

Son, 2018

Acrylic on paper

50 x 50cm

Jordi Alcaraz

Untitled, 2018

Mixed media

55 x 65cm

The appealing proposal from the gallery directed by Miquel Alzueta comes from Barcelona. In its booth, the audience can appreciate the unique poetics of Jordi Alcazar, an artist who “paints without paint”, who "makes meta-painting, or almost", as the journalist José Ángel Montañés pointed out. The overwhelming and conceptual work of Alcazar invites us to question the very nature of painting, its shapes, techniques and messages, at the same time revealing the narrow (and sometimes conflicting) relationship it may have with literature, or rather with the exercise of reading, something that overwhelms the day to day of the artist. His pieces are small books with dark and deep holes, like a kind of precipices: there is no doubt that literature can calm and even heal a restless mind, but it must not be forgotten that it can become a pernicious obsession for those who love it in excess. Living other lives, starring in the stories of "others" and holding our particular disappointments back, is a great temptation that the artist Hugo Alonso knows very well. In his paintings on paper, in which thriller film hints are revealed, it always seems that something crucial is about to happen, or something revealing has just happened; in fact the seductive feeling of curiosity that the gaze hides, very enhanced in these works by the unreality of black and white.

Andrea Torres Balaguer

Vermilion, 2018

Mixed media

142 x 112cm

The seduction produced by mystery is also very present in the photographs of the series "The Unknown" by Andrea Torres Balaguer: stylish women whose faces have been veiled by brushstrokes, drips, mineralized paint. The mystery, the fascination, the hidden tale or the pure aesthetic pleasure are traits that have characterized the works of the young photographer since her beginnings. Very different female portraits are those presented by the painter Lídia Masllorens: firsthand close-ups sometimes only enlarged details, represented through an agile, liquid brushwork, but guided in a very conscious way. The Catalan gallery closes with the work of Maria Yelletisch, essentially graphic, conceptual and compiler spirit; and with the personal mythology of the, only in appearance, playful Edgar Plans -also represented by the Marita Segovia gallery.

Pepa Salas

Desiderare con l'anima I, 2018

Mixed media on canvas

100 x 150cm

Markus Fräger

Der helle Schein 1, 2018

Oil on canvas

50 x 70cm

Undoubtedly enigmatic are the works presented by Robert Drees Gallery (Hannover). From the figurative, provided by the paintings of Pepa Salas, creator of sensual images and the intriguing stories in which the reality of black and white is usually disrupted with the introduction of discordant elements in colour; or the more expressionistic work by Markus Fräger, in which stories the chosen time is given a complex meaning and sublimated by the artist, who masterfully explores the psychology of portraits and the aura of environments.

Michael Laube

21-17, 2017

Acrylic on glass

40 x 100cm

Jürgen Jansen

Kerames III, 2018

Tinta y acuarelas sobre papel

125 x 158cm

The mystery comes many times precisely from duality, to unite opposite aspects, as does the South Korean artist Sun Rae Kim in her fantasies in rubber and paper: reflecting at the same time on the outer surface and the inner structure, in her work traditional materials of Korean culture along with others imposed by current industrial times are combined. The two most abstract proposals presented by the German gallery can also seem mysterious: the beautiful and ethereal installations in acrylic glass by Michael Laube; or the most hypnotizing and risky paintings of Jürgen Jansen, in which a final layer of the resin often makes them irresistible.

Carlos Regueira

Bosque de Ferrolterra, 2017

Mixed media, photography and painting

70 x 35cm

Alfonso Zubiaga

Binario I. It Isn´t chaos, it´s just Binary, 2018

Photography

83 x 113cm

The artists of Fucking Art present in this edition of Art Madrid an interesting selection of their most recent creations, as the hybrid landscapes by Carlos Regueira, between photography and painting: intriguing from that peculiar solitude, allure from the beauty of the inhospitable. The audience can also find out the new pieces of Alfonso Zubiaga that give continuity to the series "It is not chaos, it is only binary", where the photographer introduces us to the contradictions between the analogue and digital worlds from the depth of lyric nights of strange serenity.

Ángeles Atauri

Árbol y escalera, 2018

Tinta sobre papel

100 x 100cm

Isabel Alonso Vega

Levógira, 2018

Fumes and methacrylate

30 x 30cm

Especially poetic is the work by Atauri: both in her graphic works, where the author reveals a meticulous observation and a deep passion for natural shapes, as in her object-based pieces, where the poetics of repetition are paired with more conceptual issues. The gallery selection closes with the enigmatic works in suspension by Isabel Alonso Vega: smoke, frozen and dissected scrolls inside methacrylate urns that, however, acquire extreme and unexpected beauty. Both for the alternate personality of this gallery, created and managed by the artists themselves, as well as for the nature of their proposals, can well relate to those verses by Neruda that say: "Come on, let's leave / this suffocating river / in which we swim with other fish / from dawn to shifting night / and now in this discovered space / let’s fly to a pure solitude” (translated by Alastair Reid. “The future is space. Memorial de Isla Negra", 1964).

Cristina Alabau

Nº2 Espacio sensible, 2018

Murano glass on corten iron base

55 x 40cm

The entire Valencian selection of Alba Cabrera Gallery (Valencia) includes the exotic landscapes travelled (or imagined) by Calo Carratalá: naked interpretations of the landscape from an absolute interiorization and essentiality of the shapes that seem to speak of a sense of internal exile. Also, essential lines and interiorization of nature includes the work of Cristina Alabau, artist of which the gallery exhibits a set of watercolours works and some of her sculptures made in Murano glass. Here the landscape expresses itself through poetic abstraction as an interior territory full of evoking.

José Juan Gimeno

Entre la Quinta y Broadway, selfie, 2018

Acrylic on board and serigraphy on methacrylate

100 x 100cm

Alba Cabrera completes her proposal with the work of José Juan Gimeno and his reflection on urbanism and urban anthropology. We now delve into the urban and social plots that, through the concrete readings of the works, expose a reality (or a fiction) in time as elusive as it is ours, which paradigms are in the continuous transformation.

Mónica Dixon

Nowhere Nº 8, 2018

Acrylic on canvas

50 x 50cm

Estefanía Urrutia

S. Fosforescencias 7, 2015

Oil on canvas

46 x 55cm

Finally, MH Art Gallery (Bilbao) presents the latest works by four artists. The public can enter the mysterious spaces created by Mónica Dixon: a counterpoint to the mental and visual noise of everyday life, a place of reflection marked by silence, stillness and the play of light and shadow that reveals presences that hide through the out of focus. In the same way, the characters of the oil paintings by Estefanía Urrutia appear from the silence, from the iridescence that exists in daily life, this daily normality in which so many things happen and go unnoticed but could have great aesthetic or emotional relevance.

Thilleli Rahmoun

Sin título, 2017

Mixed media on paper

150 x 175cm

The distortion of the urban web reaches great expression in the work by Thilleli Rahmoun, an Algerian artist especially sensitive to the changing concerns, experiences and ways of life of the contemporary city. Luckily, we can always take refuge in the most ancestral mysticism, as the work by the South Korean Joo Eun Bae offers through her spiritual landscapes turned into abstractions, watery and light but at the same time that compact and textural.

 

In the ecosystem of contemporary art fairs, where the acceleration of visual consumption threatens to drain meaning from even the most solid proposals, Art Madrid faces a challenge that is anything but minor: how to remain relevant without being lost in the noise. This is not merely about showing artworks; it is about articulating an experience of reading, about offering visitors something more than a succession of brief stimuli that are quickly forgotten.

This edition of Art Madrid is played out precisely on that terrain: the persistence of the gaze. In contrast to easy spectacle or outdated rhetoric, many of the participating galleries commit to practices that demand time, attention, and a certain critical disposition from the viewer. There is no single dominant aesthetic or unified narrative; what emerges instead is a field of tensions in which painting insists on its continued relevance, the body is understood as a political archive, matter operates as a form of resistance, humor functions as a critical tool, and memory appears as an unstable territory.

Far from claiming false neutrality, this selection underscores something worth noting: each artistic choice implies a stance, a reading of the present and, in many cases, a response to an art scene saturated with images. It is particularly refreshing to see how many of the works resist immediate impact. There is a clear intention to work through process, through the gradual accumulation of meaning, through languages that cannot be exhausted in a single encounter.

It is also noteworthy how the body appears as a site of historical inscription; how landscape ceases to function as a backdrop and instead becomes a symptom; how abstraction is no longer an escape, but a way of thinking through contemporary complexity. In many of the artists presented, the work seeks to tighten its bond with those who encounter it.

This text is not intended to function as an explicit catalogue, nor as a conventional list of recommendations. Its aim is instead to propose a critical journey, grouping the works into thematic constellations that help make sense of what is taking place in this edition of Art Madrid. Each gallery is represented through a single artist—not as an isolated figure, but as part of a broader conversation that the public can continue by visiting the fair from March 4 to 8 at the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.


WU Chia-Yun. Yiri Arts. Nowhere II, 2021. LED light, carton. 36 x 54 x 6 cm.


WU Chia-Yun - Yiri Arts

WU Chia-Yun (Taiwan, 1988) is an artist and filmmaker whose practice lies at the intersection of experimental cinema, installation, and conceptual art. Through the use of expanded cinematic language, her work investigates issues related to identity, displacement, belonging, and contemporary existential experience. Her practice is characterized by a precise attention to the materiality of image and sound, which are transformed into spatial and temporal devices. By layering media such as moving image, photography, printing techniques, drawing, and transfer, WU constructs complex perceptual environments that invite the viewer to inhabit the time and space of the work.

From a position shaped by transnational experience and cultural nomadism, her production articulates a sensitive reflection on how political, social, and affective contexts shape subjectivity. Far from linear narratives, her works function as carefully composed scenarios in which each element participates in a visual choreography that exceeds the traditional limits of cinema to become a bodily and reflective experience.


Rob van Hoek. Uxval Gochez Gallery. Where the days are longer. 2025. Mixed media on canvas. 70 x 120 cm.


Rob van Hoek - Uxval Gochez Gallery

Rob van Hoek (Netherlands, 1957) is a self-taught artist whose professional trajectory, since its beginnings in 1993, has revolved around a sustained investigation of the cultivated landscape understood as a visual, rhythmic, and emotional construction. Removed from the idealization of untouched nature, his work focuses on territories shaped by human intervention, where fields, rows of trees, paths, and rural architectures configure a geography marked by order, repetition, and memory. His painting is characterized by a deliberately playful use of perspective and a refined figuration that oscillates between flatness and depth. This balance lends the compositions an appearance of simplicity, supported by a carefully developed formal structure. The titles of his works are drawn from fragments of popular and jazz song lyrics, reinforcing the poetic dimension of his landscapes and expanding their symbolic resonance through a dialogue between image, music, and everyday experience.


Lúcia David. Trema Arte Contemporânea . Alone. 2024. Técnica mixta. 24 x 30 x 12 cm.


Lúcia David - Trema Arte Contemporânea

Lúcia David’s practice (Anadia, Portugal, 1966) unfolds within the realms of installation, sculpture, artist’s books, and text, integrating techniques such as collage and hand embroidery. Her work constructs visual narratives that address the female condition and Portugal’s collective memory through a conscious valuation of imperfection, roughness, and simplicity. Articulated through a poetics of silence understood as a space of resistance and reflection, her production takes the form of a series of “question-objects,” primarily made of paper, in which materiality and the handmade gesture operate as core generators of meaning.


Lana Khayat. Shiras Galería. Botanic Cipher, 2024. Óleo sobre lino. 182 x 152 cm.


Lana Khayat - Shiras Galería

Lana Khayat (Lebanon, 1983) is a contemporary artist whose practice lies at the intersection of nature, heritage, and abstraction. Her work is built upon the movement between Spanish landscapes and the silent vastness of the Arabian desert, weaving contrasting territories into a visual language that is deeply personal yet universal. Through the dialogue between organic forms and geometric structures, Khayat develops a visual poetics rooted in memory and open to the present. Her work creates spaces of remembrance and reinvention that transcend the purely aesthetic, where the past is not preserved as a relic but reactivated and transformed.

Her production can be read as a tribute to feminine resilience and as a sustained reflection on identity as a living inheritance. At the same time, it proposes an experience of art understood as language, archive, and shared legacy.


Ignacio Iñigo. Pigment Gallery. El vuelo del Águila navegante, 2025. Piel de pintura sobre bastidor con varilla de bambú. Pintura instalativa. 70 x 50 cm.


Ignacio Iñigo - Pigment Gallery

Ignacio Iñigo (Chile, 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist trained in Architecture who develops a pictorial practice focused on materiality, minimal gesture, and the bodily dimension of painting. His work stems from a sustained interest in what he terms the “skin of painting”: an understanding of the pictorial surface as a sensitive body in which chromatic application manifests as material presence capable of modulating perception. His practice thus forms part of a broader reflection on the relationship between body, perception, and experience, expanding the limits of painting toward a space of active contemplation and conscious presence.


Isabel Ruiz. Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea. Sin título 2, 2025. Fotografía impresa en dibond. 100 x 160 cm.


Isabel Ruiz - Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea

Isabel Ruiz (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1959) has developed a sustained investigation into perception and the economy of the image. Trained in Communication Sciences at the University of Lima (Peru), her relationship with photography began early and was consolidated through a prolonged engagement with landscape, understood as a space of experience and emotional projection. After a professional career developed in parallel with the corporate world, she resumed her artistic practice with renewed intensity in 2010, deepening her engagement with digital photography in a self-taught manner and complementing her training through masterclasses, advanced workshops, and specialized printing processes.

Through measured compositions and rigorous editing, her work activates a space of contemplation that gradually engages the viewer, understanding the image not as a closed object but as a field of relation. In a context marked by visual saturation and the hyperproduction of digital images, her practice proposes a slowing of the gaze and a more conscious perceptual experience, in which landscape functions as a trigger for memory, presence, and affect.


Iván Prieto. Moret Art. Mr Lacasitos. 2025. Cerámica. 34 x 16 x 18 cm.


Iván Prieto - Moret Art

Iván Prieto’s practice (O Barco de Valdeorras, Ourense, 1978) is grounded primarily in sculpture, understood as a space for critical exploration of the body and normative models of representation. His work begins with a conscious deformation of the human figure: rather than constructing individual portraits, he creates altered typologies—bodies that expand, swell, or overflow—calling into question traditional canons of identity, beauty, and appearance.

Holding a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, Prieto lived in Berlin for five years, a city that had a decisive influence on the consolidation of his visual language. After returning to Spain, he settled in Galicia while maintaining an active connection with the German capital. This transnational experience is reflected in a body of work that combines formal sophistication with a critical gaze toward contemporary discourses on the body, identity, and the cultural construction of the image.


Cedric Le Corf. Loo & Lou Gallery. Torpeur I, 2025. Oil on canvas. 140 x 119 cm.


Cedric Le Corf - Loo & Lou Gallery

Cédric Le Corf’s painting (Bühl, Germany, 1985) focuses on the body understood as a site of tension and conflict. His figures do not seek anatomical representation or narrative, but appear instead as unstable physical presences, constructed through matter and gesture.

He works with oil paint in an intensely material and expressive manner, where visible brushstrokes and dark, earthy—occasionally luminous—colors act as emotional vehicles. His compositions avoid equilibrium, generating bodies that seem to emerge and disintegrate across the pictorial surface. His practice engages in dialogue with German Expressionism and the Spanish Baroque tradition, consolidating a painting that addresses fragility, memory, and the persistence of the body.


Reload. LAVIO. Blond Ambition. 2025. Mármol rosa, negro y blanco. 62 x 32 x 12 cm.


Reload - LAVIO

Reload (Barcelona, 1972) is a visual artist and performer whose practice centers on hand-carved marble sculpture, understood as a site of friction between tradition and contemporaneity. His work falls within what he terms retrofuturist art: a fusion of the classical sculptural canon with codes drawn from popular culture, cinema, music, and contemporary narrative universes.

Far from a formalist approach, his work proposes a critical reinterpretation—often infused with humor—of Western art iconographies. By transferring popular imaginaries into a material historically associated with permanence and canon, Reload destabilizes cultural hierarchies and rewrites tradition from a contemporary subjectivity. Sculpture thus becomes an active device in which the cultured and the popular, the canonical and the countercultural, coexist in tension.


Carlos Quintana. Kur Art Gallery. ST. Óleo sobre lienzo. 100 x 70 cm. 2025.


Carlos Quintana - Kur Art Gallery

Carlos Quintana’s work (Havana, Cuba, 1966) occupies the margins of post-expressionism, articulating a singular pictorial language distinguished by chromatic intensity, gestural force, and deep psychological charge. His painting does not establish a direct relationship with dominant trends or specific generations, but instead develops a distinctive voice, recognizable for its visual power and its ability to address the human condition from a complex, non-literal perspective.

The bold use of color and a figuration that avoids direct description transform his surfaces into fields of emotional and symbolic tension. The pictorial gesture operates as a vehicle for inner resonance rather than a formal device, generating dense visual atmospheres that engage the viewer on a sensory and affective level. In this sense, his work has been recognized as one of the most solid and singular proposals within the contemporary Cuban post-expressionist panorama.


Fabian Treiber. Kant Gallery. It Matters Still. 2025. Acrílico, tinta, pastel al óleo, pastel y papel sobre lienzo. 150 x 130 cm.


Fabian Treiber - KANT Gallery

Fabian Treiber’s work (Ludwigsburg, Germany, 1986) occupies an intermediate territory between figuration and abstraction, articulated through a formal investigation into the relationship between interior and exterior as perceptual devices. In his paintings, these notions do not function as narrative categories, but as visual structures that question subjective projections and our ways of constructing reality.

Treiber makes pictorial decisions based on form rather than storytelling, generating a conscious rupture that turns the supposed “falsehood” of painting into one of its central qualities. His works produce a subtle sense of estrangement—something seems slightly off—which, far from being an error, constitutes the core of his pictorial precision. The image is thus constructed as a field of perceptual tension rather than a stable representation.

Trained in Fine Arts at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, he has received significant recognitions such as the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Grant (2018), the Marianne Defet Painting Grant awarded by the Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2018), and was a finalist for the Große Hans-Purrmann-Preis in 2021. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries including Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Museum zu Allerheiligen (Schaffhausen), Ruttkowski;68, and KANT Gallery, among others, as well as in numerous group exhibitions across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States.


Eduardo Urdiales - Inéditad Gallery. Pulsar start y dejarse corroer, 2025. Grafito y carboncillo y tinta china sobre papel fijado a tabla. 65 x 55 cm.


Eduardo Urdiales - Inéditad Gallery

Eduardo Urdiales (Roquetas de Mar, 1998) appears at Art Madrid ’26 with a series of drawings in which graphite and charcoal on paper mounted on board become the core of an introspective and performative poetics. His practice conceives drawing as a space of conceptual and emotional tension that exceeds representation, activating the surface as a site of presence and resistance.

Works such as El Nómada, Pulsar start y dejarse corroer, and Cinco minutos de silencio demonstrate a precise command of the medium and a rigorous exploration of tonal density and economy of means. The choice of paper mounted on board breaks with the notion of drawing as a preliminary stage and positions the discipline on an autonomous plane, where every gesture and every void acquires structural weight.

Holding a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Granada and a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Artistic Production from the University of Málaga, Urdiales deepened his engagement with drawing in the final years of his training, consolidating a personal language that has already been recognized in competitions such as the 25th Gregorio Prieto Drawing Prize (2019), ModPortrait Drawing Prize (2020), and the International Painting Competition Villa de Fuente Álamo (2022).

Pilar Salvá. Gerhardt Braun Gallery. Metamorfosis. 2025. Acrylic ink and Indian ink on canvas. 146 x 114 cm.


Pilar Salvà - Gerhardt Braun Gallery

Pilar Salvà’s practice (Palma de Mallorca, 1978) unfolds within a subtle tension between realism, surrealism, and introspective contemplation. Her work arises from a sustained exploration of the human figure—particularly the face—understood not as mimetic representation but as a threshold between the visible and the interior. The figures she constructs operate in a space of ambiguity where the conscious and the unconscious intertwine.

Working primarily with watercolor and Chinese ink on paper, she has developed a refined technique. Her compositions stand out for their precision and attention to minimal gestures and subtle expressions, capable of activating a deep emotional charge without resorting to narrative exaggeration. While her practice has focused largely on figurative portraiture, Salvà also explores other registers and approaches abstraction as a means of expanding her visual investigation. Her work proposes an experience of slow contemplation, where the image functions as an introspective device rather than a closed narrative, always ready to unfold.


Mathieu Lucas. Galerie One. Petit navire. 2025. Técnica mixta. 70 x 70 cm.


Mathieu Lucas - Galerie One

Mathieu Lucas (France, 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist trained in graphic arts whose practice integrates sculpture, painting, installation, and visual storytelling within a coherent and singular language. Influenced by urban culture, he has developed a body of work that oscillates between miniature realism and a conceptual poetics closely linked to contemporary issues.

His work is characterized by the creation of meticulous scenes and volumetric compositions that address the complexity of today’s world through a restrained aesthetic in which rawness and refinement coexist. Through frequent use of reclaimed materials, Lucas pays particular attention to materiality, processes of transformation, and the symbolic value of objects, constructing visual narratives that function as micro-scenarios charged with critical tension.

The apparent fragility of his compositions contrasts with the conceptual density of the themes he addresses, generating a precise balance between technical rigor and critical discourse. His work proposes a careful, attentive gaze in which the small becomes an effective device for thinking about the social, the political, and the everyday.


Ángela Mena. Galería Sigüenza. The power of Color, 2023. Óleo sobre lienzo. 81 x 81 cm.


Ángela Mena - Galería Sigüenza

Ángela Mena (Seville, 1985) presents The Power of Color, an oil on canvas in which color stands as the conceptual and formal engine of the work. With solid training in Fine Arts, the artist has developed a practice centered on abstraction, rooted in sharp sensory intuition and a deep commitment to landscape and perception. She works with oil paint in a way that reveals a deliberate articulation between flat color fields and gradual transitions, generating compositions that read as visual echoes of perceptual experiences. Her strident palette responds to an internal logic in which each tone establishes relationships of contrast and resonance that guide the viewer’s gaze across the pictorial plane.


Francisco Pereira Coutinho. Galería São Mamede. Bruxelas I. 2023. Fotografía Diasec. 120 x 80 cm.


Francisco Pereira Coutinho - Galería São Mamede

Francisco Pereira Coutinho (Lisbon, 1992) is a photographer and film director whose work is embedded in an experimental image tradition. He explores multiple-exposure techniques—a cinematic procedure consisting of exposing the same negative several times to light—creating compositions in which lines, planes, and textures converge into a hybrid visual fabric. His photography is characterized by the construction of images that resemble urban kaleidoscopes, where elements of the city are juxtaposed and layered, producing effects of visual ambiguity and spatial tension. Works such as Bruxelas I function as visual maps of fragmentation in which each element modulates the perception of depth, rhythm, and texture.


Beth Shapeero. Galería Rodrigo Juarranz. 2024. Fingers Neon 6 R. Acrílico sobre lienzo.


Beth Shapeero - Galería Rodrigo Juarranz

Beth Shapeero (Glasgow, 1985) presents a body of work that opens up a space between abstraction and playful narrative. Her pieces are not defined by a single style or recognizable motif, but by a tension between imperfection and control that achieves an unstable balance between constructive decision-making and aesthetic chance. She works with materials and strategies that combine drawing, form-making, and surface manipulation, articulating spaces where glossy shine, graphic line, and accidental fissure interact in a visual polyphony. Her interest in the subconscious, imperfection, and desire transforms the visual into a space of psychological and affective inquiry.


Manuel Barreiro. Paparolo. Galería METRO. Soma Inclinado. 2023. Gres esmaltado. 52 x 50 x 30 cm.


Manuel Barreiro (Paparolo) - Galería METRO

Manuel Barreiro (Paparolo) (O Grove, Pontevedra, 1951) presents a selection of glazed stoneware pieces, among which Soma Inclinado stands out. His trajectory combines artistic training with a background in Biological Sciences, traversing ceramics, sculpture, and a hybrid practice in which traditional form is placed under tension by contemporary readings of volume. He uses glazed stoneware with a gestural approach that oscillates between the organic and the structural, exploring surfaces of visual density and textures that evoke both the archaeological and the biomorphic. The apparent technical simplicity of his work conceals a complex negotiation between weight, balance, and tension. The use of titles such as Soma (body) suggests a reflection on the corporeality of the object and its analogy with living structures.


Antonio Barahona. Galería María Aguilar. Retiro. 2025. Óleo sobre tabla. 81 x 116 cm.


Antonio Barahona - Galería María Aguilar

Antonio Barahona (Seville, 1984) presents a series of works, among which Retiro—a large-format oil on panel—stands out. The piece combines the tradition of landscape and figure with a critical gaze toward representation and memory. His careful brushwork and composition balance presence and void, while the treatment of light operates as a structural element that situates the viewer within a reflective atmosphere. The palette, inclined toward tones of controlled lyricism, establishes an ongoing dialogue between figure and environment, constructing a visual narrative that connects the viewer with the nostalgia of childhood courtyards.


David Planas. Galería Luisa Pita. ST. 2025. Mixta sobre lienzo. 125 x 45 cm.


David Planas - Galería Luisa Pita

David Planas (San Antonio de los Baños, Havana, Cuba, 1976) problematizes landscape as an epistemological construction. He articulates the pictorial plane through fragmentation, texture, and compositional decisions that transform the gaze into a meaning-producing operation. Landscape appears in his work as an unstable semiotic system that must be interrogated, dismantled, and reconfigured as a field of thought. This practice establishes a cognitive displacement in which landscape is constituted in the very act of being thought, shifting its condition from a given object to that of a constructed experience.


Marcos Juncal. Galería La Mercería. Amarillo en Equilibrio. 2024. Madera pintada, cuerda, mármol. 60 x 30 x 14 cm.


Marcos Juncal - Galería La Mercería

Marcos Juncal (Pontevedra, 1975) develops a visual practice in which the pictorial surface and the presence of the object meet at a point of constant tension. His work commits to formal structures derived from geometric abstraction in order to rework rules of perception and space. He operates through a reduction of the visual spectrum using lines, planes, and colors—elements calculated to activate a physical and cognitive response in the viewer. The artist proposes conditions of play and relation, underscoring the importance of an active gaze. An invitation for the viewer to feel implicated in the construction of meaning.


Carmen Van den Eynde. Galería Espiral. Reflejos en el estanque IV, 2022. Óleo sobre lienzo. 89 x 146 cm.


Carmen Van den Eynde - Galería Espiral

Carmen Van den Eynde (Torrelavega, 1947) is a key figure in contemporary photography and vegetal art. Her work spans decades of technical exploration, from still lifes to more recent series such as Reflejos en el estanque IV. Her practice occupies a territory in which the natural establishes a bridge between the tradition of classical still life and a contemporary sensitivity toward processes of transformation within vegetal and visual environments. Van den Eynde reclaims traditional photographic discipline only to unfold it into pictorial compositions that operate as reflective surfaces, where composition, light, and contrast become means of activating the object’s presence and visual impact beyond the merely natural.


Prado Vielsa. Galería Carmen Terreros. Cartografía de luz II. 2025. Impresión digital en metacrilato de colada transparente. 40 x 40 cm.


Prado Vielsa - Galería Carmen Terreros

Prado Vielsa (Soria, 1972) presents a sculptural proposal based on research into color, transparency, and light as elements that structure space. In works such as Cartografía de luz II, she articulates folded volumes in transparent or black methacrylate, introducing a tension between luminosity, shadow, and form. Light ceases to be an effect and becomes a material driver of the work—an agent that shapes and defines both visible and invisible surfaces. Her work explores the spectator’s sensory perception. Her folded structures emerge from a dialogue between image and specific space. Methacrylate becomes an interface of reflection and refraction, where light bends, disperses, and constructs virtual planes.


Beatriz Castela. Galería Beatriz Pereira. Interference I, 2022. Madera de roble y metacrilato. 30 x 20 x 30 cm.


Beatriz Castela - Galería Beatriz Pereira

Beatriz Castela (Cáceres, 1985) departs from a sustained concern with perception and the limits of reality in the digital age. Her practice is polyphonic and transdisciplinary, spanning drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and new media to investigate how we construct sensory experiences in a context saturated with images. Castela alternates traditional techniques (ballpoint pen on paper, acrylic painting) with strategies incorporating contemporary materials such as methacrylate and conceptual installations. Her work offers a critical perspective on how technology and contemporary visual culture shape our understanding of others and of reality itself.


Manuel Martí Moreno - Galería BAT alberto cornejo.Inanna. 2025. Varillas corrugadas, soldadas y pintadas. 105 x 73 x 55 cm.


Manuel Martí Moreno - Galería BAT alberto cornejo

Manuel Martí Moreno (Valencia, 1979) develops a sculptural practice that problematizes form at its core. Structures made of nuts, corrugated rods, and welded steel are articulated into pieces where void becomes as central as matter itself. Works such as Inanna condense a radical use of welding; the open, perforated structure reveals internal contractions, tensions, and spaces that redefine the work. In his sculptures, void operates as a constructive element by nature. It is not only about what is present, but also about what is deliberately absent. Martí Moreno works at the intersection of presence and absence, producing objects that seem to emerge from a collage of tensions and fragilities.


Faustino Ruiz de la Peña. Galería Arancha Osoro. Derivion. 2025. Óleo, lapiz y pigmento. 31 x 27 cm.


Faustino Ruiz de la Peña - Galería Arancha Osoro

With a trajectory rooted in painting and drawing, Faustino Ruiz de la Peña (Oviedo, 1969) is an artist whose work gathers visual experiences and personal transformations that conceal a poetics of melancholy and enigma. His production relies on memory as a plastic resource. The scenes he paints—houses, trees, birds, urban structures—do not function as anecdotal representations, but as signs carrying a sense of mystery. The pictorial gesture appears deliberately slow, almost meditative, creating planes where color, light, and composition reinforce a sensation of expanded time.


Andrey Budko. g·gallery. Hear My Roooar. 2022. Bordado con hilo cerámico sobre fieltro de lana. 450 x 140 cm.


Andrey Budko - g·gallery

Andrey Budko’s work (Russia, 1989) builds a bridge between tradition and contemporaneity, positioning textile as a device for cultural thought. Initially trained in design, Budko shifts his materials toward a critical poetics in which felt and embroidery function as both surface and symbolic territory. Works such as Hear My Roooar condense historical, iconographic, and cultural references that oscillate between the familiar and the strange. He manipulates embroidery and felt with a striking economy of means, dispensing with ornament in order to highlight the handmade trace, texture, and raw materiality.


Arol. Est_ArtSpace. Like a virgin. 2025. Acrílico y óleo sobre tablero 3D de madera. 50 x 30 cm.


Arol - Est_ArtSpace

Arol (Buenos Aires, 1974) represents the intersection between digital language and pictorial tradition that dominates many contemporary practices. His work evidences a transition from digital media to oil on wood, constituting a critical gesture against prevailing technological acceleration. The images formalize a field of tension between layers, pixels, and organic materials activated across the pictorial surface. This dynamic reveals an underlying question: how are speed, virtuality, and digital fragmentation translated into terms of physical and material presence within painting? His production articulates a logic in which pictorial gesture dialogues with the visible residues of code and the underlying structure of digital images.


Palito Dominguín. DDR Art Gallery. La niña de las trenzas. 2025. Acrílico sobre papel. 100 x 100 cm.


Palito Dominguín - DDR Art Gallery

Palito Dominguín’s proposal (Badajoz, 1996) reveals a creative practice that moves between drawing, painting, and imagination. Her works display a narrative impulse linked to a playful logic represented through hybrid figures, fantastic characters, and universes of form that seem to emerge from a childlike imaginary. Her use of color—bright and bold, with contrasts that sediment the gesture—reinforces this logic of an alternative universe in which each stroke functions as the sign of a micro-story. Her visual world moves between the precision of drawing and the chromatic freedom of painting.


Enrique A. Cabrera. Collage Habana. Biforme I. 2024. Tinta sobre madera. 90 x 65 cm.


Enrique A. Cabrera - Collage Habana

Enrique A. Cabrera (Havana, Cuba, 1993) presents work situated at the crossroads of geometry, structure, and materiality. His assemblages on wood expand traditional pictorial application; they fragment planes and surfaces, establishing spatial tensions where gesture and form converge, evoking states, rhythms, and discontinuities. He works from a poetics of geometric abstraction that does not shy away from references to specific socio-historical and sensory contexts, inscribing his practice within a Latin American tradition that dialogues with the notion of limits—both spatial and conceptual.


Alejandra Gandía-Blasco. CLC ARTE.Serie atardecer 2 en ibiza, 2022. Copia Ultrachrome en papel fotográfico Photo Rag 188 g Hahnemühle, montaje en dibond de 2 mm, montado y enrasado sobre marco de madera. 85 x 64 cm.


Alejandra Gandía-Blasco - CLC ARTE

Alejandra Gandía-Blasco’s proposal (Alicante, 1984) manifests a poetic tension between the transitory and the meditative. She works with horizons, light, and atmospheres that seem to encode the passage of time and the variability of landscapes. Her production suggests a dialogue between climatic conditions and human relationships with the environment: the coastline, the uncertainty of change, and the sensory intuition of light as a structural element of the painting. A synthesis of lyrical abstraction is articulated, grounded in precise compositional decisions that subject the pictorial elements structuring her work to subtle metrics.


Soonik Kwon. Banditrazos Gallery. Absence of Ego. Shadow 2-01. 2024. Técnica mixta sobre lienzo. 150 x 150 cm.


Soonik Kwon - Banditrazos Gallery

Soonik Kwon (Seoul, 1959) arrives at Art Madrid ’26 with a group of mixed-media works on canvas characterized by dense surface treatment. The painting is built through superimposed layers, marks that brush against one another, and textures that suggest tension between figure and ground. His work operates through a reflection on the self and its dissolution. Variations across his series explore interstices between form and void as a strategy for questioning stable notions of identity, presence, and figuration. His practice dialogues with Western abstraction and Eastern visual sensibility.


Anita Suárez de Lezo. Aurora Vigil-Escalera. Nyvra, 2025. Acrílico y oro de 24k sobre madera. 167 x 129 cm.


Anita Suárez de Lezo - Aurora Vigil-Escalera

Anita Suárez de Lezo (Madrid, 1980) presents a body of work in which geometry, color, and mirrored surfaces converge in a plastic discourse of structural clarity. Working with acrylic, 24k gold, and mirrors on wood or linen, she generates surfaces that respond to space and to the viewer’s gaze. Her work combines rigorous planes and intense colors with precious materials, creating a tension between sobriety and ostentation. The rigid geometric forms— inspired by Eastern minimalist architecture and the visual memory of New York—function as structures of meaning that organize visual space. The use of mirrors introduces depth, movement, and viewer participation by fragmenting and multiplying the image.


Marina Puche. Alba Cabrera Gallery. ST. 2025.Técnica mixta sobre papel. 100 x 70 cm.


Marina Puche - Alba Cabrera Gallery

Marina Puche (Valencia, 1982) participates with a series of mixed-media works on paper that exploit the surface through contained strokes, economical application of color, and breathing spaces. Her work arises from careful attention to details of human experience. Seemingly disparate influences—such as the circus, patchwork, or Valencian Fallas art—converge in a proposal that seeks to capture small affective or psychological tensions. The repetition of formats and the choice of paper as support underscore an interest in intimacy, the domestic, and the relational.


Bidias Romaric. 3 Punts Galería. One for the road. 2024. Acrílico sobre tela. 200 x 180 cm.


Bidias Romaric - 3 Punts Galería

Bidias Romaric (Cameroon, 1995) presents a series of paintings in which pictorial gesture dialogues with political urgency and contemporary social memory. Working with acrylic on large-format canvas, Romaric combines intense gestural marks, saturated colors, and texts or graphic elements layered among color fields. This concatenation creates a visual presence that functions as both social critique and affirmation of identity. In One for the road, human forms overlap with chromatic blockages that fragment the body, generating tension between what is represented and what is repressed. His painting—strongly influenced by the expressive energy of Basquiat—is reconfigured through an African subjectivity that rejects exoticization and paternalistic gazes.





If anything runs through this edition, it is the conviction that contemporary art, far from being exhausted, is recalibrating its tools. It is no longer about inventing entirely new languages, but about rigorously revisiting existing ones, stretching them, and making them frictional with the social, economic, and affective realities we inhabit. In this sense, one of Art Madrid’s greatest achievements is assuming that the public no longer needs to be told what to look at, but why to pause. And so, as a kind of appetizing starter, we invite you to stop, to return to the works, so that each person may trace their own map of Art Madrid' 26. A non-definitive map, open to expanding its boundaries, that reveals the persistence of the gaze upon what moves us from within.