DDR Art Gallery is participating for the second consecutive year in the One Project program of Art Madrid. “Variaciones" by Virgina Rivas and "Avatares" by Roberto López can be seen at the Fair as part of the project "Salvajes. La cage aux fauves", curated by Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta.

The art works that the artist Virginia Rivas (Madrid,1981) will present in Art Madrid are part of a wide project called "Variaciones", in which the artist investigates about the color in our environment as well as the perception that we have of the same one depending on our emotional state and of the political and social situation of each one of us. Rivas analyzes our reality through colors.

The artist from Extremadura experiments with painting from a classical pictorial process, investigating forms and matter through abstraction and gesture. Rivas also relies on other artistic media such as photography in its various forms (polaroids, slides, etc.), video, light boxes or neon.

Virginia Rivas, Estudio AVNT, 2019

Virginia Rivas incorporates in some of her works small written texts, generally fragmented and sometimes practically illegible, but which are part of a narrative discourse that is totally intentional on the part of the artist, who integrates the graphics of the words as another plastic element of the composition. The expressiveness of the gesture, the colour, the light and the words are part of the abstraction inherent in her work, through which Rivas investigates intimacy and collectivity, establishing a fundamental game in which space and the spectator are indispensable.

The tandem of artists participating in Art Madrid with DDR Art Gallery is completed by Roberto López Martín (Madrid, 1982). "Los niños tele, el nuevo homo videns" includes a series of works with which he participates in "Salvajes". The artist works with different plastic languages that range from his studies in graphite and wax to his collages, present in another series such as "Fluffy Children". In Art Madrid, the artistic proposal is centred on his sculptures, known as "avatars" worked in fibreglass, resin and other materials.

Virginia Rivas, Estudio GTCCR, 2019

In "Avatares", López Martín focuses on childhood, on the innocence of the child when he begins to create a relationship with the objects around him, giving his toys imaginary values and personalizing them in a subjective way. This relationship, according to the artist, "is distorted when corporations enter to participate establishing uses and forms of consumption on the different toys, making these pre-format a way to relate to the world of children".

Roberto López's sinister avatars fight against all manipulation by the toy industry and in his "ready made" pieces he reconstructs and assembles pieces he finds in the garbage or selects consciously using his sense of humor and his most perverse sensibility.

RLM

Avatar Cowboy, 2017

Tela sobre fibra de vidrio y resina

150 x 30cm

DDR Art Gallery focuses its efforts on promoting the work of both established and emerging Latin American artists. In the virtual space of DDR Art Gallery, we find works from almost all disciplines: photography, sculpture, collage, illustration and urban art. DDR Art Gallery were pioneers in the direct sale of contemporary art on the Instagram platform, and without a doubt, the presence both online and in social networks, is the basis of the project since its inception. Its main motto is: "If you're not on Google, you don't exist."

RLM

Avatar El Elegido, 2016

Tela sobre fibra de vidrio y resina

150 x 30cm

Since it was founded in 2006, the gallery maintains two lines to promote the work of its artists: online sales and attendance at national and international fairs, with a clear focus on the contemporary art market. A third line of promotion and sale is the space of Theredoom Gallery in Madrid, where DDR Art Gallery organizes individual and thematic exhibitions. In addition to Rivas and López Martín, DDR promotes the work of six other artists: Annita Klimt, David Delgado Ruiz, David Heras Verde, Evangelina Esparza, José A. Vallejo and Raúl Casassola.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26

Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

PERFORMANCE: OSCURECER UN PAPEL. BY ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

March 5 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

Nocturnality. Installation. Rocío Valdivieso..

Oscurecer un papel forms part of a series of actions in which the artist engages in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. Within this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is transformed when spoken aloud, assuming a different form in the act of articulation. The texts stem from an ongoing investigation into materiality, space, the relationships between body and matter, writing, the sculptural, and a sustained interest in the exploration of voice and orality.

The material from which Oscurecer un papel is constructed consists of a collection of purchase receipts the artist has been accumulating over time. The printed text they contain, together with the action of bringing them into proximity with a heat source—thereby activating the thermal paper on which they are produced—generates meanings that revolve around the notions of consumption and wear.

Rocío Valdivieso. Latent Aura. Performance documentation.

ABOUT ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an MA in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) and a BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. She was a Fundación Carolina fellow from 2022 to 2023. She currently co-directs Errática. Laboratory of Processes and Critique in Madrid, alongside Romina Casile.

She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at the Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and in 2020 participated in the Intensive Curatorial Program of Proyecto PAC at Galería Gachi Prieto, Buenos Aires. She received the Visual Arts Promotion Award at the 4th Visual Arts Week of the Ente Cultural de Tucumán. She was awarded an AUGM scholarship for an exchange residency at UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. She also participated in the International Residency Program La Ira de Dios and in the Acéfala Galería Residency for Argentine artists.