Art Madrid'26 – COME TO DISCOVER WHAT THE EYE DOES NOT SEE

Eyes of a jumping-spider, magnified x10.
Javier Rupérez has specialised in images of insects, helping himself of led-lamps to throw light on his eight-leg models.

 

 

 

Technology has served science working on better telescopes, better microscopes, a lens of larger reach… from which an image is required as a result, a shot that finally captures that discovery, that unique moment. But without the need of crossing the edges of our planet, the world under microscope offers many of possibilities.

 

 

 

Igor Siwanowicz. Front foot (tarsus) of a male diving beetle, magnified x100.
5th place en el Small World Nikon, 2016.

 

 

 

The use of macro photography started to spread out into the biological research, but early it became clear the artistic potential it offered. At mid-path between research and photographic composition, some of these images seem unbelievable, or even we could think that they are whatever thing different from what they really are.

 

 

 

Alexey Kljatov inspired by his home country Russia to discover the beauty of a snowflake.

 

 

 

Macro photography works with images of small objects whose dimension must be seen at least at the same size they are. Many photography brands have focused on new objectives with lens specialised for this kind of works with outstanding results.

 

 

Suren Manvelyan.

 

 

Suren Manvelyan was a mathematics and astronomy teacher before devoting himself to photography. Now he works as a photographer for the Yerevan Magazine and he specialised in macro photography.

 

Some of the most impressive shots were taken by magnifying up to 30 times their size, what reveal an inaccessible reality to human eye, a universe of invisible details that even, taken out of context, lose the reference of their dimension and can look like monumental constructions.

 

 

 

Francis Sneyers, Scales of a butterfly wing underside (Vanessa atalanta), magnified x10.
11th place en el Small World Nikon, 2016.

 

 

Sharon Jhonstone is an English photographer that works artistic macro photography. The choice of motif, colour and light are not casual at all in the search for the perfect balance in her magnified compositions.

 

 

 

Sharon Jhonstone.


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.