Madrid Art Week: five days for contemporary art

If there is anything conclusive after the Art Week in Madrid, it is the boom that Latin American art is having in Europe. It is not by chance that ARCO had Peru as the guest country, and that hundreds of artists from that country took Madrid by assault, beyond the IFEMA precincts. The old continent looks to Latin America and to the collectors of this region as a great market to discover and, obviously, to exploit.

In fact, in 2020 Latin America will once again star in the most important contemporary art fair in Spain, and nothing less than "It's just a matter of time- Es solo cuestión de tiempo", a reading of artistic practices from the work of Cuban-American Félix González-Torres.

But going back to this year, it is possible that eighty percent of the fairs that make up this great showcase that is the Week of Art have had Latin American artists and galleries, among them some Cuban ones. Evidently, the largest representation was the Peruvian, with its president Martin Vizcarra at the head, inaugurating ARCO with the Kings of Spain and followed by the long entourage of ministers and personalities who accompanied the work of more than two hundred contemporary creators of that Andean country.

Of the island, as we know, were in Art Madrid Gustavo Díaz Sosa (Gallery Bat Alberto Cornejo), Andy Llanes, Roldán Lauzán, Daniel R. Collazo and Ernesto Rancaño (Collage Havana) and Just Mad, Rubén Alpizar and Manuel Mendive (Estudio Contemporary art). Marta María Pérez and Liset Castillo (Galería La Acacia) participated in the curated section Diálogos, by ARCO, while Glenda León (Galería Senda, Barcelona), Dagoberto Rodríguez (Peter Kilchmann, Switzerland), Diana Fonseca, Yaima Carrazana, Reynier Leyva Novo and Juan Carlos Alom (The Apartment, Havana) participated in the General Program.

Given this display of Cuban and Latin American art, it was obvious that Arte por Excelencias, a multicultural journal of Ibero-America and the Caribbean, had to be. And it was: supporting as media partner Art Madrid in the Glass Gallery and Urvanity in the COAM, witnessing the birth of SAM-Modern Art Salon, inaugurating the fourth edition of Drawing Room in the Palace of Santa Bárbara, spending up to the last drop of energy in the pavilions of IFEMA, where the unarousable ARCOMadrid, mother of all the fairs that make up this Week, is in session.

On days like these we would like to have the gift of ubiquity or the power to charter a plane to bring from Havana our entire press team. But as it is not possible, we are satisfied with buying a public transport card, which will allow us to easily be at eleven o'clock in Cibeles inaugurating Art Madrid, two hours later in the crowded Arco Forum (on the other side of the city) with Mario Vargas Llosa touring the cultural history of his native country, and at 8, again in the center to have a wine at the opening of Drawing.

And this is just the beginning ... we have only five days (from February 27 to March 3) to see where the market moves and artistic trends; to soak up the best of contemporary art, the emerging and the consecrated; to personally meet the young artists who in a few years will be the Picasso, Dalí, Miró, Tapies ... that we venerate today (and whose works we value in millions of euros).

Day 1

11:00 am Art Madrid opens its doors; before we went through our headquarters on Capitán Haya Street, to provide us with copies of our magazine. All we can load will be few ... Already in Cibeles, we receive Sara Zambrano, press head of Art Madrid, who congratulates us for the number 44 of Arte por Excelencias: it was beautiful! Congratulations and many thanks for your support and confidence. I'm glad to see the article dedicated to Martín de Lucas ... "(In addition to this work on the artist invited to Art Madrid, the magazine brings an interview to its director, Alberto Cornejo, whom we will greet later).

But we are happy to see the cover of our magazine in the catalog of the fair, full page! And also this comment of Sara, that we would receive by email days later: "without a doubt you are from the best media partner. The whole team thanks you very much for supporting the fair so much. "

With the press credential to the neck, our next stop could not be anywhere else than at the stand of Collage Habana, one of Art Madrid's oldest galleries. We are pleased to see familiar faces and, in addition, check the dimensions of the works that we have previously seen through social networks.

The triptych of Andy Llanes, from the series "Levitaciones", is sublime; also surprised "“Las muñecas de la infanta ", by Roldan Lauzán, and his new version of " El padre Abelardo "; we see the unmistakable architectural drawings of Daniel R. Collazo. Ernesto Rancaño does not leave us indifferent either, since it is not colorful paintings that he brings, but monochromatic installations where he mixes photography, sculpture and artificial light ... There is hardly time to see the spaces of the more than 40 galleries (26 national and 16 foreign) that surround; there are works by almost 200 artists ... We make a quick pass, some photos ...

01.00 pm The Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa talks with the critic Juan Manuel Bonet, in the inaugural talk of the Arco Forum. We already know that Peru will be the protagonist ... They speak, mainly, of an era in which that country had a buoyant culture, until the dictatorship came and "the country suffered a cultural blackout" that isolated them. Summarizing, Vargas Llosa affirmed something that we could verify during these days: "Peru is a country with many identities".

01.30 pm We attended the delivery of the VII Audemars Piguet Prize, endowed with 15 thousand euros for the production of a specific work for ARCO. The luxury watch brand recognized the Italian artist Andrea Galvani, represented by the Peruvian gallery "Revolver", who has created an installation of neon sculptures that take their form of mathematical equations.

"Our nature can be understood through art. This is a space for reflection, which is open, which can be lived. What surrounds us is a light, bright landscape, it is a cloud of light that tells a deep story, which is also made of failure, of physical efforts," said the artist, who lives and works between New York and Mexico City.

2:15 pm In the institutional stand of Peru, of 136 m2, "Peru in ARCO" is presented, with works of 24 artists represented by galleries from different countries, and the parallel program of exhibitions and activities, curated by Sharon Lerner and Fietta Jarque, respectively. There are Andean drinks and snacks, and next to the printed program, they give us some delicate bags designed by Elliot Tupac, whose "chichas posters" can be enjoyed in various areas of Madrid.

4.30 pm We take this opportunity to greet Sharon Lerner, curator of contemporary art at the Lima Museum of Art (MALI), who so kindly responded to our interview ("The most international moment of Peruvian art"), published at number 44. We also provide with the MALI Trustees, whose Contemporary Acquisitions Committee has just received the "A" Prize for ARCO Foundation collecting, for its support for the dissemination of contemporary art in the world.

5.00 pm On the stand of the Marlborough gallery, the 3rd Catalina de Anglade Prize is announced, which this year was for Luis Gordillo, one of the most recognized artists of the Spanish art scene of the second half of the XX century and what goes from the XXI. His canvas " Paisajes por placas " will become part of the private collection of the designer and patron and, during the second phase of the award, will make a work ex professo to expose it next year at Anglade stand here at ARCO, as Secundino Hernández does now, awarded in 2018.

8:00 pm We attended the inauguration of the fourth edition of Drawing Room, a fair dedicated to the diffusion and visualization of contemporary drawing, in which 19 galleries from Belgium, Argentina, Japan and Spain participated. We stop at two galleries that we usually follow: Artizar (Tenerife) and Lucía Mendoza (Madrid); also in that Nazari fruit name that we saw before in Art Madrid, although it comes from the most southern part of the American continent: the Buenos Aires Granada Gallery.

Day 2

11:00 am ARCO officially opens its doors. The Kings of Spain and the President of Peru are coming. Security measures are strict and it is difficult to get close to the delegation, but at the El País newspaper stand we got the photo; For something this reporter uses a new camera these days! The sculpture Contrapposto (a mountain of books), from Madrid's Alicia Martín, serves as my frame and the drawings (To the civilized world) by the Peruvian Fernando Bryce, make a backdrop.

1.30 pm Cervezas Alhambra presents the III Emerging Art Award to Elena Alonso, for S13, R19, Z26, a set of three pieces inspired by Arab chess. The jury highlights "its great technical quality, the narrative and playful intelligence of the work". Also that "it is rich in nuances and with multiple levels of meaning and establishes an agile dance with the story and with the history of art that keeps it open and resonant".

As in previous editions, the city of Granada and the Alhambra are the sources of inspiration for this award, which is articulated as an itinerary of learning and production that lasts several months. First, a committee of experts invites five artists to tour the Nasrid monument. Then, they will work with important artisans, who will guide them throughout the creative phase of the work, which is exposed, finally, in the space of Cervezas Alhambra de ARCO.

The finalists of this edition were Mónica Planes with the work Auca de Granada (in four revolving doors), Gabriel Pericàs with Circulation (Ascent # 1), Circulation (Ascent # 2) and Flow; Asunción Molinos with Dunia, Mulk, Yabarut; and Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González with Matriz Alhambra.

3.00 pm We went to the stand of the Cuban gallery La Acacia, in the curated section Diálogos, where Marta María Pérez and Liset Castillo exhibit. "They are two proposals that although they seem distant, they converge. They are two creators of different generations. Two emigrant artists who left Cuba at different times and who have achieved some international presence in a different way, "says Clarisa Crive, specialist in the art market.

Less than 30 hours ago it opened its ARCO doors and there are already two museums that have acquired some of Marta María's photographs. Clarisa confirms this: "It had to be this way because Marta María is no longer a Cuban photographer, she is a photographer of the world and an emblem of contemporary Latin American photography. Her series To conceive has been sold to the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires-MALBA and other of her works to a Latin American Art Foundation, of Paris ".

"The work of Liset Castillo has also had a lot of repercussion, especially in the press. It has attracted a lot of attention as the artist works the iconic bags of the fashion world to talk about life, about the ephemeral ... it is a meticulous, handcrafted work, because they are made of sand, such an illusory material, so volatile ", continues the specialist Cuban

"Graffiti is a luxury that we can not afford." Before returning to the city, we take a look at the one that is announced as the most expensive work of Arco: the door of a train full of graffiti ... Actually, the most expensive work is a Miró by the French Galerie Lelong (4 million ), but with this message that has appeared in all the newspapers and magazines of the country, the railway company wants to draw attention to a problem that each year costs the Spanish 15 million euros.

6.00 pm Preview of the third edition of Urvanity, the Spanish fair dedicated to new contemporary art (disciplines that start from urban art such as post graffiti, surreal pop or new pop art). Daniel Mesa, from the press office, jokingly tells us that we do not need the Dossier they have prepared, since everything that it contains has already been published on our website in recent months. He also appreciates the follow-up we gave in Granada to the Tuenti Urban Academy, one of the projects with which the fair consolidates its work throughout the year.

We entered the multicolored world of Okuda San Miguel, which this year continues to speak, with its special project "The rainbow Mountains", and in the "Solo Shows" of the new Curated Program: four different ways of working urban art , but as a whole they give an idea of ​​where contemporary artists move: from the geometric pieces of the Czech Jan Kaláb (Magma Gallery) and the monochromatic figures of the Spanish Sam3 (Doppelgaenger), to the recreation of urban life ( rather the urban night) of the pioneer of the New York street art Dan Witz (Wunderkammern), until arriving at the "Muses and warriors", of the French Miss Van (Fousion Gallery).

This year 23 national and foreign galleries attend. Touring them is a non stop of famous brands: Moneyless in Doppelgaenger (Italy), D * Face in Stolen Space Gallery (London), Juan Miguel Quiñones in Pantocrator Gallery (Berlin), 1010 in Affenfaust Gallery (Hamburg), Sabek in Swinton Gallery ( Madrid), Sfhir in Durán Online Gallery (Madrid), Grip Face in SC Gallery (Bilbao) ... Through the corridors we see Ampparito, one of the artists that Arte por Excelencias interviewed in Granada when the Tuenti Academy; we caught Okuda talking with the DJ in the Mahou Space and, to Miss Van, dressed in a print animal costume, in Fousion Gallery (Barcelona).

Day 3

11:00 am We return to ArtMadrid and ¡Bingo !, today if we can say hello to its director, Alberto Cornejo, whose interview in number 44 circulates around all the stands of the fair (finally the box with the magazines has arrived and this morning everything the world is looking at it). Our presence could not be more timely!

With him, we visited the family stand of the BAT gallery Alberto Cornejo, where the Cuban Gustavo Díaz Sosa repeats, on his payroll for some years. Together with Mariam Alcaraz, director of BAT, we talked about Cuban art and the importance of the presence here of galleries on the island for promotion (so collectors do not have to take a plane to the Caribbean ...) Also of the recent incorporation of Roldán Lauzán to his catalog.

Cornejo confirms that this is the most international edition of Art Madrid: 40 percent of the total number of exhibitors are foreigners. Also in the curated program One Project there is an important presence of Ibero-American artists. We ask for a couple of photos for future interviews ... our collaboration as a media partner is just beginning ...

2.00 pm After tasting some of La Virgen's beers, sponsor of Art Madrid, we interviewed Roldán Lauzán, one of the most visible faces of the Cuban presence here. In front of his immense canvas "The sum of all the fears" (an ambiguous portrait that does not make clear if the priest is a woman or a homosexual), the young man tells us: "I knew that this work was going to be controversial in a country as Catholic as Spain, but my intention is not to offend anyone's faith. "

3:00 pm Finally, we can approach Rubén Martínez de Lucas. He is the Artist Invited this year to Art Madrid and everyone wants to talk to him: in fact, our interview seemed like a television set with several people watching us. The photo that illustrates this work was made by one of the collectors of his work, who also stood in line to greet him.

5:00 pm As we know that time is money here, we aim for a guided tour of the Madrid-SAM Modern Art Hall, which opens with ten Spanish galleries and works that have not been seen before. It seems that we are in a pinacoteca, but with the difference that you can take home (if you can afford it, obviously) paintings and sculptures of some of the artists who have shaped the art of the 20th century, such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Antoni Tàpies, Tamara de Lempicka, Miquel Barceló, María Blanchard, Antonio Saura, Equipo Crónica, Eduardo Chillida ...

Days 4 and 5

We return to ARCOMadrid, to Art Madrid, to Urvanity, to the great model that the Galician Isaac Cordal installed in the patio of the COAM. A city in ruins inhabited by small concrete men, destroyed, something beautiful and overwhelming at the same time. We walked on the giant "trompe l'oeil" made by the German 1010 and that, like many of the works of urban art, was quickly destroyed by passers-by in Fuencarral.

Looking for the Peruvian footprint, we enter the Fundación Telefónica, which shows an impressive exhibition about the Nasca culture. In Cibeles we see " El calor derrite los estilos ", by Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves. In Casa América, " Estratos de un paisaje ", collection of photographs by Jan Mulder ... You have to hurry the "pending" and attend conferences: Joana Vasconcelos, one of the most outstanding artists of the last decade, which closes the cycle of the Cervezas Alhambra award ... to the BSA Talks de Urvanity, curated by the New York project and urban art magazine Brooklyn Street Art ...

Finally we pack our bags and return home thinking how to summarize in a few pages all that we have experienced and seen these days, promising that next year we will do more. Art Week in Madrid will be a delicious memory that will accompany us for many more weeks; At least until I got another event that makes us start again this beautiful career that is cultural journalism.

Photos: @yricardo