For the last decade, 'millennials' have become a trendy term and we heard often about the concerns of a new generation that has broken into the new millennium to address many of the challenges that the future has in store for us, with all its uncertainty and ambiguity. It is undeniable that any change, even if it generates a benefit, comes along with a time of transition in which the foundations and the structures that we believed to be immovable begin to crumble. The intrinsic evolution of these phenomena is linked to a sense of uneasiness that societies face from the collective support and from the need to open the debate on the concerns, as new and well-known, that marks our evolution and the fate of our time.

The new generation creators have made their way on the art scene, focusing part of their work on addressing topics that are intimately connected to the reality of the moment. It is the channel to subvert classicism, to make pieces that show commitment to the environment, to make their works a manifesto that transcends mere contemplation and becomes a form of plastic expression of a shared feeling.

Alejandro Monge

Black Series - The Wind, 2019

Oil on canvas

40 x 40cm

In Art Madrid, we have been able to verify this growing movement of artists of the new millennium that are detached from prejudices and archetypes to focus on issues of enormous social impact that affect us all. The number of young creators has been increasing in the latest editions of the fair, and it is also remarkable that the paths of expression chosen by many of them are fueled by artistic hybridization, the fusion of techniques, exploration beyond the image, the search for a second reading.

Today we remember the work of some of these authors who have visited us at the 15th edition of the fair and we get closer to their work.

Chen Sheng-Wen

Rusa unicolor swinhoei, 2018

Hilo de hierro e hilo flor danés

30 x 30cm

Chen Sheng-Wen

Martes flavigula, 2017

Hilo de bordar y lienzo, Plástico, Papel higiénico

25.5 x 25.5cm

Among the artists who show a concern for the excessive consumerism of our time, the depletion of resources or the future of an alienated society, we highlight the case of Alejandro Monge (Zaragoza, 1988) and that of Chen Sheng-Wen (Taichung, Taiwan, 1993).

Monge's work has on many occasions sought irony about the tangible value of money and superfluous appreciation of material things, often with art installations that replicated stacks of bills in bank deposits or safes. His latest, more pictorial works show a dark side of global society, drowned in its energy production needs and in the polluted and aggressive atmosphere in which we live in large cities.

For his part, Chen Sheng-Wen proposes a much more delicate hand-made work in which he represents the delicacy of nature and its need for care, reproducing with embroidery and mixed technique numerous animals from our immediate environment. Sheng-Wen's decision to use recycled materials, rescued from the forests usually inhabited by these beings, shows the lack of care for mankind and the degree of exposure to which these species are subjected.

Onay Rosquet

Attachments, 2018

Oil on canvas

200 x 200cm

Onay Rosquet

Tuesday, 2018

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

Onay Rosquet (Havana, 1987) moves in a similar line with a work that transmits a great aesthetic balance but allows multiple readings. Their boxes of papers, sometimes folded, others wrinkled or stacked, make us think about the problems of lack of communication in the society of our time while posing the dilemma of the appropriate use of resources and the generation of waste with high environmental impact. Of these two ideas, the first is the main line of his discourse: the era of hyperconnectivity leads to the paradox of the lonely, abandoned individual, who has lost the ability to interact in a non-technological way. A simple glance at his pieces makes us think of the thousands of words that do not arrive, the things that are not said, the feelings that are repressed in a context dominated by the pretending of happiness and the fake of perfection.

Art installation by Nina Franco at Art Madrid'20

Other creators emphasise social inequality. Nina Franco (Rio de Janeiro, 1988) tries to represent gender inequality and the harassment that many women suffer on a daily basis, especially in some patriarchal societies. Her work reflects a great concern for contemporary socio-political conflicts.

Adlane Samet

Tiens, 2016

Acrylic

144 x 120cm

Adlane Samet

Gants noir, 2018

Acrylic on canvas

100 x 80cm

For his part, Adlane Samet (El Harrach, Algeria, 1989) treats inequality from the perspective of its immediate environment, raising the question of where certain societies are located on the global scene, in which there seem to be first-class and second-class countries. His work is visceral and colourful, and the impulse of the brush strokes itself externalises that authentic and pure vitality of the environments not contaminated by imported ideas.

Cristina Gamón

60 Marina, 2016

Mixed media on methacrylate

81 x 130cm

Cristina Gamón

Colores Fronterizos, 2016

Acrílico sobre metacrilato

100 x 70cm

We also highlight the work of Cristina Gamón (Valencia, 1987), an artist who explores the evolution of painting with the incorporation of new materials and the integration of plastics as support. Her works remind us of landscapes of arid zones, laboratory experiments or the iridescent drawings of oil on water. She aims to offer a contemporary painting with representative materials of our time, without losing the expressive force of colour.

The work of Cedric Le Corf (Bühl, Germany, 1985) is situated in a territory of friction, where the archaic impulse of the sacred coexists with a critical sensibility characteristic of contemporary times. His practice is grounded in an anthropological understanding of the origin of art as a foundational gesture: the trace, the mark, the need to inscribe life in the face of the awareness of death.

The artist establishes a complex dialogue with the Spanish Baroque tradition, not through stylistic mimicry, but through the emotional and material intensity that permeates that aesthetic. The theatricality of light, the embodiment of tragedy, and the hybridity of the spiritual and the carnal are translated in his work into a formal exploration, where underlying geometry and embedded matter generate perceptual tension.

In Le Corf’s practice, the threshold between abstraction and figuration is not an opposition but a site of displacement. Spatial construction and color function as emotional tools that destabilize the familiar. An open methodology permeates this process, in which planning coexists with a deliberate loss of control. This allows the work to emerge as a space of silence, withdrawal, and return, where the artist confronts his own interiority.

The Fall. 2025. Oil on canvas.195 × 150 cm.

In your work, a tension can be perceived between devotion and dissidence. How do you negotiate the boundary between the sacred and the profane?

In my work, I feel the need to return to rock art, to the images I carry with me. From the moment prehistoric humans became aware of death, they felt the need to leave a trace—marking a red hand on the cave wall using a stencil, a symbol of vital blood. Paleolithic man, a hunter-gatherer, experienced a mystical feeling in the presence of the animal—a form of spiritual magic and rituals linked to creation. In this way, the cave becomes sacred through the abstract representation of death and life, procreation, the Venus figures… Thus, art is born. In my interpretation, art is sacred by essence, because it reveals humankind as a creator.

Between Dog and Wolf II. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

Traces of the Spanish Baroque tradition can be seen in your work. What do you find in it that remains contemporary today?

Yes, elements of the Spanish Baroque tradition are present in my work. In the history of art, for example, I think of Arab-Andalusian mosaics, in which I find a geometry of forms that feels profoundly contemporary. In Spanish Baroque painting and sculpture, one recurring theme is tragedy: death and the sacred are intensely embodied, whether in religious or profane subjects, in artists such as Zurbarán, Ribera, El Greco, and also Velázquez. I am thinking, for example, of the remarkable equestrian painting of Isabel of France, with its geometry and nuanced portrait that illuminates the painting.

When I think about sculpture, the marvelous polychrome sculptures of Alonso Cano, Juan de Juni, or Pedro de Mena come to mind—works in which green eyes are inlaid, along with ivory teeth, horn fingernails, and eyelashes made of hair. All of this has undoubtedly influenced my sculptural practice, both in its morphological and equestrian dimensions. Personally, in my work I inlay porcelain elements into carved or painted wood.

Between Dog and Wolf I. 2025. Oil on canvas. 97 × 70 cm.

What interests you about that threshold between the recognizable and the abstract?

For me, any representation in painting or sculpture is abstract. What imposes itself is the architectural construction of space, its secret geometry, and the emotion produced by color. It is, in a way, a displacement of the real in order to reach that sensation.

The Anatomical Angel. 2013. Ash wood and porcelain. 90 × 15 × 160 cm.

Your work seems to move between silence, abandonment, and return. What draws you toward these intermediate spaces?

I believe it is by renouncing the imitation of external truth, by refusing to copy it, that I reach truth—whether in painting or in sculpture. It is as if I were looking at myself within my own subject in order to better discover my secret, perhaps.

Justa. 2019. Polychrome oak wood. 240 × 190 × 140 cm.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

It is true that, on occasions, I completely forget the main idea behind my painting and sculpture. Although I begin a work with very clear ideas—preliminary drawings and sketches, preparatory engravings, and a well-defined intention—I realize that, sometimes, that initial idea gets lost. It is not an accident. In some cases, it has to do with technical difficulties, but nowadays I also accept starting from a very specific idea and, when faced with sculpture, wood, or ceramics, having to work in a different way. I accept that.