Art Madrid'23 – YOUR FIRST ARTWORK: VENTURE YOURSELF IN THE WORLD OF ART COLLECTING

Perhaps, at first glance, getting started in the collection of contemporary art may seem complicated and even more if the potential buyers are not part of the specialized sector. However, from Art Madrid we want to encourage young collecting and accompany all those interested in entering the wonderful world of private collecting.

Perhaps we can highlight some keys that will help the audience to decide on a work: on the one hand, choosing artists whose careers are in an initial or intermediate state; on the other, start with those small format works made on paper. In addition, if possible, seek advice from gallery owners or even being able to meet the creator, will greatly help in making decisions. Of course, we must erase the possible barriers that still would condition the contemplation and acquisition of contemporary art and simply dare to know it from respect, imagination and personal background.

Virginia Rivas

El amor está en la tierra, 2017

Acrylic, graphite and bodybuilder tape on canvas

20 x 20cm

Contemporary creation is much closer than we think; we have to remember that these artists live in our time and therefore may have very similar aspirations or concerns to ours. Although it seems otherwise, especially because of the variety of languages used by the contemporary artist, we can delve much better into his world view, since we have more tools to understand and it is closer to us than the one Titian, Goya or Picasso had. Anyone who has a real interest in entering the world of current art will discover that it is not as complex or encrypted as he may have thought, and if not understood, it must not be rejected either. Many times it is not about understanding or justifying each of the forms, it is more about enjoying, knowing the creative proposals and letting yourself be surprised. Of course, the viewer does not have to like everything that exposed, for the simple legitimizing act granted by the gallery or the museum, but neither has to deny all creation because of certain prejudices. Painting, sculpture, photography, audiovisuals, graphic work, technological art, living arts, action art... Art was never more open than in our days.

Manuela Eichner

Monstrenga, 2018

Objeto en PS

57 x 29cm

Rūta Vadlugaitė

A Cone, 2017

Oil on canvas

51 x 44cm

In a fair like Art Madrid, which has always stood out for being cosy and close, you can find very interesting and affordable works to get introduced into collecting such as the special edition of Guest Artist, Rubén Martín de Lucas. It is a limited series of photographs part of the series "Repúblicas Mínimas" and corresponds to the "Republic No. 12". Likewise, the work on paper by the young Rūta Vadlugaitė (Contour Art Gallery) could interest the starting collector. Her work, characterized by the roundness of the shapes and the large spots of colour, can be found in one of the stands of the One Project of this edition since this artist has been one of those selected by the critic Nerea Ubieto. Other participants of this curating program are Virginia Rivas (DDR Art Gallery) and Manuela Eichner (RV Art and Culture), from which you can also buy some of the pieces from their series at a very good price. It is the same with the work on paper by Cristina Alabau, poetic abstractions of nature.

Cristina Alabau

Espacio interior, 2018

Watercolor

15 x 30cm

In this edition, furthermore, the potential collector can also acquire works of different techniques or supports at fairly affordable prices. In this sense, it is possible that many would be interested in the work by Silvio Alino (3 punts), a young artist who creates a fun, fresh and colourful work within pop culture, through mixed techniques on canvas. Equally, surely the small format painting by Pepa Salas (Robert Drees) will captivate more than one: from a beautiful game of black and white and colour touches, her work usually hides mysterious stories. They are other worlds in which to introduce ourselves, such as the most naturalist by María Ortega Estepa (Galería Luisa Pita); the urban ones by José Juan Gimeno (Alba Cabrera Gallery); or the most imaginative and enigmatic by Carolina Bazo, Jacques Custer o Jessica Schneider (O-Art Project).

Silvio Alino

Pop Icon, nº 392, 2018

Mixed media on canvas

40 x 40cm

María Ortega Estepa

Soñe contigo la noche que comenzaba la primavera, 2018

Oil on canvas

60 x 40cm

Another work that could seduce the young collector is that by Carlos Tárdez (Bea Villamarín): wonderful sculptural pieces that stand out both for their aesthetics and for their critical messages. Between sculpture and silkscreen lies the work by Iván Baizán (Arancha Osoro), an artist that investigates the technical possibilities of printing to the point of arriving at a three-dimensionality very coherent with its maximum preoccupation: the architectonic and urbanistic tracings and our ways of inhabiting them. And if what interests you is sculptural abstraction you can get to know, in the same stand, the fine work in glass by Luis Parades (Arancha Osoro).

Carolina Bazo

Patrones, 2017

Photography

20 x 70cm

Carlos Tárdez

Atlas, 2018

Polychrome resin

14 x 7cm

Finally, we highlight the special editions of interesting artists that can be found in many of the galleries participating in Art Madrid, such as BAT Alberto Cornejo, Moret Art, Fucking Art or Rodrigo Juarranz, among many others. You just have to dare to get acquainted with contemporary art and chat to gallerists and artists.

It is true that there can be many reasons that explain the purchase of art, a wide range that goes from the pure passionate impulse that can be felt before a piece to the coldest, but also very necessary, purchase as an investment. In the first event, there are such famous cases in Spain such as Pilar Citoler, a great collector who always remembers with affection her first acquisition: the work "El Andaluz Perdido" by José Caballero in the Juana Mordó gallery in 1970. From that date, Citoler has continued to expand a rich and very heterogeneous collection, the result of the passion of a "pure", pioneering and avant-garde collector, concluding with the transmission of more than 1,200 works to the Government of Aragon. Almost a disease that continues to feed today: "there cannot be art without obsession" read one of the great exhibitions on her collection curated by the critic, and specialist in the collection, Alfonso de la Torre. In the second case, there are numerous outstanding national corporate collections, especially those that seek the art of new technologies such as the BEEP Collection, Inelcom or BBVA. It only remains to us to decide how and why we want to collect, with all options being as interesting as they are legitimate.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.