ART FAIRS:Art Madrid 2021

Art Madrid, the most important contemporary art fair in the Spanish capital, celebrates its 16th anniversary this year with an edition that is more dynamic and transgressive than ever with changes that promise to please all attendees and participants. The fair defines itself as an open and global proposal that offers the perfect opportunity to discover and acquire singular works covering all disciplines.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Art Madrid Archive

Art Madrid defines as an open and global proposal that offers the perfect opportunity to discover and acquire unique works by dozens of artists. The 16^th edition brings together 32 galleries and more than 150 national and international artists, including 8 newly incorporated exhibitors. Art Madrid presents the “One Shot Collectors’’ program within its 16^th edition. This initiative, sponsored by One Shot Hotels, materializes its commitment towards supporting the collection of contemporary art and strengthening the professionalization of the market through the involvement of cultural agents, artists and the art-loving public. The program includes a personalized purchasing advice service, by art consultant Pía Rubio, as well as a selection of pieces made by the critic and curator Natalia Alonso which illustrate the idea of   “The Art of Living”. The curated tour comprises works from different disciplines where photography stands out. The artists that are part of this selection are: Add Fuel, Mária Švarbová, Guillermo Oyagüez, Sandra Paula, Fernando Suárez Reguera, Gorka García, Jesús Chamizo, Hugo Alonso, Anbel, Malgosia Jankowska, Silvia Flechoso and Francesca Poza. Galleries and artists affirm that this past year has been a very productive time which has allowed them to establish a different, slower look towards creative investigation. With the desire to recover live art and involve the viewer in the experience of the fair we will have three installation proposals in which the work will be completed with the participation of the public. Jaime Sicilia’s “Amapolas” project will have its own space at Rodrigo Juarranz’s stand. An installation that takes us to a field of poppies with 200 serialized pieces that will be pro-gressively emptied throughout the fair as if they were “collected”. The work pays tribute to female writers and heroines from universal literature, inviting us to reflect on the ephemerality of life and love. The sculptor Kiko Miyares, together with 3 Punts Gallery, presents his latest creation “Auto-run”, a large-scale sculpture that confronts us with the social, cultural, economic and personal shock that we have been facing in recent times. The artist Acacia Ojea will activate a twenty-minute sound intervention at the Luisa Pita Gallery on the opening day. This work is inspired by the sensitivity, plastic and sculptural materials of the five artists that make up the gallery’s exhibition project, claiming listening as a refuge in which to perceive, feel and rethink the relationships that emerge from the sound. For the online exhibition “NEW IMAGINARIES”,  15 young artists with eclectic, risky and dynamic proposals, to take a look at their most current work. Artists who are no more than 35 years old and whose career is in its initial or intermediate stages or who, despite their youth, already have a recognized place in the art market. Multidisciplinary artists, who reflect in their current thematic works, some of them making a fierce criticism in their work to political, cultural and educational aspects latent in contemporary society. Several of these authors play in their works with color and light; the conception of time, space and rhythm, while others invite us to travel to new imaginary worlds and even to tour recognizable landscapes and architectural spaces. All of them manage to transmit in their works their own creative realities and identities and express in their works (figurative or abstract) their joys and satisfactions, their fears and concerns. Isabel Alonso’s work unfolds in its spellbinding black and red colors always seeking subtlety and lightness. Her pieces have a strong evocative power that plays with the ethereal and the intangible, with the sensation of levitating, the suspension of the object and the paradox of stopping time in an instant that is encapsulated between layers of methacrylate. With meticulous and delicate work, with dedication and devotion, Isabel seeks to convey a complex and formless idea that alludes to mystical thought. To a large extent, this purpose of material representation is connected to the theory of knowledge and the approach to divinity developed by Pseudo Dionisio Areopagita, a theologian and philosopher who lived between the 5th and 6th centuries AD. This theory suggests that the greater the approach to the ineffable, the lower the degree of concretion that one can have. The sublimation of perception leads to a lack of resources, material and human, to describe and transmit that understanding. In the Special Project “Poetics Of The Gaze”, Art Madrid presents a selection of works in which the power of the gaze seems eternal as if it had a greater consistency able to expose the contained intimacies as well as demand our most emotional involvement. Precisely, the women portrayed by José Ramón Lozano usually look at us very consciously, almost demanding that we contemplate and finish the story that they themselves have opened. They have something memorable, a turning point in a possible story of internalized solitude so often accompanied by pain, something that shares with Eloy Morales. Urban Art already has several generations of artists, from the pioneer Blek le Rat to the colourful Okuda. In “Icons of urban art” Art Madrid bring together the work of eight great characters of the current street art: Blek le Rat, Shepard Fairey, The London Police, Faile, Perishable, Mark Jenkins, Okuda San Miguel and Mr Brainwash. Their work has numerous connections in the reinterpretation of contemporary icons and in the incorporation of transversal references, where techniques, aesthetics and messages are combined. In all its manifestations, Urban Art uses a risky and committed artistic language that elaborates its messages through the fusion and interconnection of countless references that make up our contemporary ideology. Art is said to fulfil a mission as a channel of reflection on the reality of our time. That the different creative manifestations employ a transgressive and anti-system discourse is an example of the need for criticism that characterises the human being and that, in the artistic context, enjoys to some extent licenses to channel a collective feeling.

Photo: Sandra Paula Fernandez, Paradise, 2021, Digital printing on dibond, 200 x 120 cm, Courtesy Arancha Osoro Gallery

Info: Art Madrid 2021, Galería de Cristal de CentroCentro Cibeles, Plaza Cibeles, 1A, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 26-30/5/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-21:00, General Ticket: 15€, Reduced Ticket (people over 65y, unemployed, students and groups (20 minimum)): 12€, Children up to 12y free, www.art-madrid.com