As every year, Art Madrid organizes activities focused on contemporary art that take place throughout the month of February and with which the fair invites the public to participate in a much more active way. In this edition, the program is focused on contemporary video art, especially concerning the most recent Spanish media creation.

The wide range of activities, organized by Art Madrid and curated by the PROYECTOR Festival, includes ranging from professional workshops, conversations with artists, lectures, master classes to curated screening programs; as well as is maintained with the collaboration of Obra Social "La Caixa" and the Community of Madrid, through its spaces CaixaForum Madrid and Sala Alcalá 31 respectively. In addition, the program has the support of Cervezas La Virgen, One Shot Hotels and the Culture and Sports Area of Madrid City Council. With this program, Art Madrid becomes a platform for new trends in video and media art, inviting everyone to participate in the most recent contemporary art movements.

Although it is more than 60 years old, video art is understood as an artistic expression, presently it is still a discipline, not too very well-known and important in the most frequent cultural circuits. However, we are facing an expanding, growing moment of these forms of creation, in fact, video creation is one of the increasingly recurrent languages among contemporary authors. The program welcomes new projects that belong to this discipline as well as its knowledge and value, qualities that over time are reflected in the ephemeral character of this type of works and the circumstances surrounding its collection.

"Sweet dreams are made of this" (2016) frame by Carlos Aires.

The activities are presented under the curatorship of Mario Gutiérrez Cru, director of the ground-breaking PROYECTOR festival, a must-see event that takes place in Madrid consisting of audio-visual creation and its multiple elements that have worked hand to hand with hundreds of artists, gallerists, collectors and cultural institutions for more than ten years. The Program is planned into two large segments, each one organized in one of the two locations: CaixaForum Madrid and the Sala Alcalá 31 Auditorium.

On the one hand, the "58 formas de mirar el cuerpo" workshop will take place at CaixaForum throughout Monday 11 and Thursday 14 of February, a unique opportunity of understanding not only new media arts but also their relationship with performing arts by the hand of the renowned creators Elena Córdoba and David Benito. Reflecting specifically on the different ways of understanding and performing dance practices, is a workshop aimed at investigating the experimental, expressive and semiotic possibilities of body language and its relationship with space.

"EverdayMasks" (2017) frame by Paula Lafuente.

On the other hand, the Sala Alcalá 31 Auditorium will host, from Thursday, February 21 to Saturday, February 23, conversations surrounding video art and media art screening sessions. The first conversation will bring together specialists such as Teresa Sapey, Eva Ruiz, Marta Pérez Ibáñez, Idoia Hormaza de Prada and Enrich Abogados in a talk aimed at creating discussion and a thinking forum. Open to all, in this activity the participation of the architect and designer Teresa Sapey is worth reminding, who will not only explain what factors may motivate buying video art but will also accompany us in an exclusive screening session about her media collection; an avant-garde collection that will provide the following artworks:

Candice Breitz with Becoming Cameron (2003), edición 2/3

Hussein Chalayan with Afterwords (2000), edición 3/5

Julian Opie with Sara Undressing (2004), edición 2/4

Marina Abramovic with Nude with Skeleton (2002-2005), edición 4/5

Eugenio Ampudia with Fuego Frío 2 (2004), edición 5/6

"Heteronímia" (2017) frame by Márcia Beatriz Granero.

The other appointments, on Friday the 22nd and Saturday the 23rd, include a conversation with the artists Eugenio Ampudia, Mateo Maté, Carlos Aires, Democracia, Cristina Garrido and Rubén Martín de Lucas who will present their media artworks in a dialogue with the public moderated by the artist and researcher Daniel Villegas, offering a unique opportunity to get to know directly their creative processes. Other highlight is the master class by Rogelio López Cuenca, one of the most outstanding national creators in the media art field. Also, the program includes two screening sessions curated by PROYECTOR: under the titles "Del cuerpo presente al cuerpo performativo" and "Ciudades" will present suggestive media works by about thirty international artists.

With this broad Parallel Program, Arte Madrid is fully committed to the most recent video art forms and narratives, which are as varied as they are complex and enriching. Thus, the fair contributes to the promotion and knowledge of the growth video art creation that, without doubt, connected especially with our current form of communication.

All the activities in detail in the Activities section

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.