ART FAIRS:Art Madrid 2022

Art Madrid, the most important contemporary art fair in the Spanish capital, celebrates its 17th 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 Art Fair Archive

The 17th edition of Art Madrid takes in the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles, an unmissable appointment with contemporary art that every year has a more significant international presence and attracts a greater number of visitors. This year Art Madrid 2022 will bring together 40 national and international galleries that will provide a fresh and current vision of the world art scene. The participating galleries offer the opportunity to see the great works that some of their artists have completed in this last year, a time that has served for research and reflection with creative results that will have a great impression on the contemporary art market. The video art platform PROYECTOR, once again under the curatorship of Mario Gutiérrez Cru, proposes a programme that revolves around the concept of a loop. PROYECTOR stand hosts a performance by new media art pioneer Gary Hill on 23 February at 8pm, and on 25 February at 8pm will host another performance by Spanish sound art pioneer Llorenç Barber. The programme ICONOSFERA is structured around three key aspects of the art world: the works, the curators and the collectors. These elements represent the itinerary of current artistic production, from the piece itself as a materialisation of creative talent, through the critical perspective and interpretative work of the curator, to the collector who, as an art lover, has an emotional connection with the work. Miguel Piñeiro is a hyperrealist artist rooted in pop aesthetics with a non-conformist and experimental spirit that leads him to apply his outstanding technical skills to painting, but also to sculpture and installation. His pieces are visually surprising, and establish a very direct and emotional dialogue with the spectator, as they depict objects that are present in our daily lives. The sculptor and painter Ramón Urbán is one of the most appreciated artists in the Levantine area. He has a broad trajectory that projects beyond regional and national borders to markets in the United States and Europe and has been present at prominent Contemporary Art fairs since the 1980s. The search for a language that combines formal purity and emotional intensity has been one of Urbán’s watchwords since cubism and before the primitive symbolism of the nabis described as true art that which is born of the expressive synthesis of line, shape and colour. His work is currently part of various public and private collections. Raúl Álvarez Jiménez is a Superior Technician in Plastic Arts from the School of Arts and Crafts No. 12 in Madrid. Currently based in A Coruña, he has to his credit a dozen individual exhibitions in galleries such as Monty4Arte (A Coruña), Metro Contemporary Art Gallery (Santiago de Compostela) or Movart Gallery (Madrid). His work usually revolves around the human figure in connection with water. To do this, he uses an impressive style between realistic and hyper-realistic with which he seeks above all to generate critical thinking in defense of ecology. Rui Sanches studied for three years at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, leaving the course in 1974 to join Ar.Co – Center for Art and Visual Communication, Lisbon, where he enrolled in the studios of painting and drawing. From 1977 to 1980 he studied at Goldsmiths’ College, London, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and between 1980 and 1982 he earned a Master of Fine Arts at Yale University, in the United States, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. During his stay in London, he stopped painting and experimented with different media and languages, ending up dedicating himself more concretely to installation and sculpture, practices that he maintains today. Vicente Gómez has a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, specialising in painting. Linked in his first professional steps to the world of design, in recent years he has made a return to painting that is based on an immersion in the latest plastic and theoretical developments of the most current neo-conceptual and neo-minimal painting, through a hybridisation between the pictorial and the sculptural centred on the expanded physical and discursive possibilities of the material of painting itself. Vicente Gómez has a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, specialising in painting. Linked in his first professional steps to the world of design, in recent years he has made a return to painting that is based on an immersion in the latest plastic and theoretical developments of the most current neo-conceptual and neo-minimal painting, through a hybridisation between the pictorial and the sculptural centred on the expanded physical and discursive possibilities of the material of painting itself. The world Vova Perkin creates is filled with bright, positive and contrasting colors. All his works are connected, with locations and characters moving from one work to another. Their plots unfold as stories which tell about the ancient and wonderful world of Ugar. Vova Perkin is the founder of the movement called Perkinism, leader of the group of artists Nasha Utopia (Our Utopia), and founder of the Perkinnale of Contemporary Art. His development as an artist was formed through significant experience in graffiti art. Xurxo Gómez-Chao’s career has evolved from his beginnings in painting to his latest works, in which photography has become his fundamental means of expression. Through elements found in his daily reality he manages to create a suggestive new and independent work, with nature as the protagonist, and in which he reflects his inspiration in classical culture and the history of art.

Photo: Chang Teng Yuan, The School of  Parrotman Athens, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 130x193cm, Courtesy Yiri Arts

Info: Art Madrid 2022, Galería de Cristal de CentroCentro Cibeles, 1 Montalbán St., near Plaza de Cibeles 1, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 23-27/2/2022, Hours: 11:00-21:00, Admission: 15€ General Ticket, 12€ Reduced Ticket (people over 65y, unemployed, students and groups (20 minimum)), Children up to 12y free, www.art-madrid.com

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