Swab Art Fair grows up in Barcelona

65 galleries, 22 countries, more than 100 emerging artists and new programs and disciplines make the eighth edition of Swab the one which consolidates this cool show in continuous search for new values.

Swab was born in 2006 as an initiative from the private collection Diezy7 Space Art in Barcelona. The art fair holds its 8th edition from 1 to 4 October at the Italian Pavilion of the Fira de Barcelona, and has become an annual event of international emerging art, well received by the public and critics. This response is what has encouraged the organization to create new programs in this edition.

The General Program 2015 brings together a large number of established galleries and highly regarded in the global market of contemporary art galleries. It also provides an opportunity for a number of newly created galleries to participate in an international art fair.

Swab Seed, program curated by David Armengol, sets out a series of separate proposals that have made their way outside the institutions in cities such as Barcelona, Madrid and Berlin. The project has a dual registration. On the one hand, it is a physical space of collective presentation of separate spaces (working methods, artists, linked, specific projects), among which are El Palomar (Barcelona), Arts Coming (Barcelona), Me & the curiosity (Barcelona) , La Encantada Gallery (Barcelona), Halfhouse (Barcelona), The Green Parrot (Barcelona), Salón (Madrid) and Junefirst (Berlin). On the other hand, it presents a program of public lectures and round tables entitled Intensity and Survival: artistic practice from the independent. The structure of the talks raises an individual presentation of each of the spaces and a later debate in which they analyzed conditions, needs and common problems.

Swab Performance, curated by Juan Canela, shows specific actions and interventions related with the body, the time, space and action. With the participation of Mercedes Azpilicueta, Elena Bajo, Ely Daou, Alicia Frankovich, Lara Khaldi & Yazan Khalili, and Claudia Pages.

Swab Forum, in collaboration with De Appel Arts Centre (Amsterdam), presents a new program through which two former alumni of the Curatorial Programme of the Dutch center have selected different artists thet will dialogue with each other and work programs of the different galleries.

Swab Thinks is a space for reflection on emerging art with lectures, panel discussions, dialogues among collectors, to think together the transformations of the contemporary.

In SOLO Swab, curated by Direlia Lazo and Carolina Ariza, individual projects of Latin American artists are presented, with emphasis on the procedural practices and creative documentaries confronted with the official story. There are new programs as Swab 'Zh?ngguó: China's new photography' and Swab Drawing Applications, curated by Monica Alvarez Careaga. A bunch of eight individual artistic projects that show the transformation in the use of traditional drawing forms. The participating artists are Paula Rubio Infante, Laura González Cabrera, Cristina Ferrandez, Luis Macias, Juan Escudero, Theo Firmo, Gómez-Bueno and Gonzalo Elvira.