Our art critic has already taken a first tour of the great Madrid art fair, as always full of points of interest, but also prone to visitor saturation. This year, with fewer audiovisual proposals and a strong presence of painting, as well as a rather blurred guest ‘territory’ section
ARCOmadrid has reopened its doors. With this, there are forty-two editions of the most important contemporary art fair in the country. Let’s highlight the fair, so we avoid unpleasantness. ARCO are two Ifema pavilions (7 and 9 to be more specific) full of plasterboard cubicles where, for better or worse, works of different kinds hang. There will be those who will be very sad because that is not the Pompidou, but the truth is that it is not even tried.
Walking through ARCO, or any fair of that size, is a lysergic spectacle. At twenty minutes, saturation; at the hour, eyestrain. After two hours, dangerous intoxication. That without counting the dozens of stops to greet friends, acquaintances or potential clients; to browse the crowded warehouses of the stands or to get closer to some of the numerous parallel activities (book presentations, round tables, conferences) that take place during the days of the fair.
Faced with such a deluge (185 galleries exhibiting more than 1,300 artists), one can spend the whole day wandering the halls and leave with the impression that something has been missed. Even, that due to the accumulation, the poor lighting and the rattle of the visitors, it has seen pimples in the worst way possible. This edition is also attended by the great names of Spanish art from the middle of the last century: Hernandez Pijuan, manolo groan (two wonderful pieces in the Helga de Alvear gallery), Luis Gordillo (I really liked the diptych of two heads that they have hung in Rafael Ortiz), the selection Spain circa 57 of the José de la Mano gallery, the ubiquitous angela de la cruz; Palazuelo, mompo and Perez Villalta (Fernández Brasso gallery, among which the delicate drawings of Guillermo Martin Bermejo), some unnoticed Barcelo (things that happen), some beautiful chromatic games of Esther Ferrer in 1Mira Madrid, the beautiful self-portrait of Elena Almeida of the booth of Filomena Soares, the proliferation of sculptures of Juan Munoz sheltered from its recent institutional resurrection, an extraordinary picture of Navarro Baldeweg in the Miguel Marcos gallery and, in the Marc Dómenech gallery, a notable painting from the series Morocco of louis claramunt that for me I wanted it.
This year the audiovisual proposals have been low, whose presence is much more discreet than in previous editions. There are, of course, the usual names in European art: some beautiful paintings of Baselitz in Thaddaeus Ropac, several pieces of imi knoebel, Emanuel Seitz, etc. To compensate, we can move away a bit with the section never the same latin american artcurated by Mariano Mayer and Manuela Moscosoalthough we also find works by Latin American artists in galleries in the main section, such as the space that Cayón gallery dedicates to the centenary of the Venezuelan Cross-Tenhe only project of Andrea Canepa in the Rosa Santos gallery, the amusing procession of dolls from Laura Anderson Barbata in marlborough or the pair of paintings knotted of George Edward Eielson, of which an interesting retrospective can be seen at the EsBaluard museum in Palma until the beginning of April. There are also two exponents of the new Puerto Rican painting: an installation of Rogelio Baez in Leyendecker and a disturbing still life of Omar Velazquez in Ana More.
What about the new generations of Spanish art? In it booth by Ehrhardt Flórez you can see a tentacular and tubular sculpture of Julia Spinolasome of the last works of kiko perez and a very good picture of Secundino Hernandez. It is also important to visit The Goma proposal, where you will find a painting of Miguel Marina which is, in our opinion, one of the most notable pieces of the fair. In the same booth there are some jobs Enrique Radigales (milled and perforated metal plates, later intervened with paint) and a piece of Arming, the latest and peculiar addition to the gallery: an engineer who lost his mind in the 50s and began to paint UFOs (you can see an exhibition presenting the character in the gallery). Similarly, in the Rodríguez Gallery you can visit some works by Cristina Mejias, one of the most outstanding exponents of the new Andalusian sculpture; just opposite, in Alarcón Criado, there are some “tapestry” of Irene Infantes and a little piece of music Joy and Piñero that deserve attention. In Madrid F2, alvaro black It shows an enormous and solemn painting, which under its apparent simplicity contains an extraordinary technical mastery.
Other essentials: papers Miki Loyal of Italian air (Renaissance) in the Rafael Ortiz gallery, the small piece of Nacho Martin Silva (a half faded portrait) in Max Estrella, the highly content embroidery of Julia Huete that can be seen in Nordés, as well as the yellow composition of Rosendo Cid; the strange jacket Ana Laura Alaez (a leather jacket from which a form between phallic and xenomorphic emerges) by Pelaires and the sculptural ensemble of Alberto Peral in Joy. the outstanding booth from the Murcian gallery ArtNueve has the cylindrical and serpentine sculptures of Christian Lagatasome remarkable pieces of Pablo Captain of the River (composed with paper, clay and the technique to gouache the paper creating those colorful shapes that used to be used in the endpapers of the books) and some surprising and colorful mushroom sculptures of Sergio Porlanamong others, in addition to the delicate dialogue between Javier Pividal and Eva Lootz.
But let’s take a break from ARCO’s traditional abracadabrant proposals. This year, things are picasso. Almost facing each other (one in the ADN gallery and the other in Max Estrella), there is a dead man and a little house. Eugenio Merino, an old acquaintance of the fans for his Franco in a fridge and King Felipe’s ninot (in collaboration with Santiago Sierra, let’s not remove responsibility from anyone), has planted a Picasso with his body present on a white base. That is to say, a Pablo Ruiz doll. I admit I was a bit disappointed: I was expecting a battered corpse, but the costume looks better than yours truly many mornings. Is shrouded with his blue and white striped shirt and his usual espadrilles. She has a little stone and I suppose she wants to convey a deep message about some of the controversies that are surrounding the imminent Picasso Year. There are those who can write a manifesto makes a stick figure. Let each one take it wherever he wants.
Opposite there is a cabin made up of fragments of Guernica, the work of Eugenio Ampudia, the conceptual artist behind the famous Concert for the Biocene that we have already dealt with in this newspaper. The interior of the cabin has four square meters, the space of intimacy that families living in refugee camps have, according to the artist. He should make an inventory of how many works Guernica has been reused to bring the ember to his sardine, but there is something sordid about putting up a work of art for sale in a hypercommodified space (remember, a fair) to profit economically from the pain of others.
Mediterranean, the curated section that occupies the space that was previously offered to the “guest country”, brings together a selection of works on very different themes (car chassis, portraits, an apothecary’s office or a collection of QRs, for example) linked by a A weak common thread, to say the least: if an artist works in Barcelona and is placed next to some photographs of some Greek ladies, we already have a narrative for this section, but it is quite questionable. The fact that she is located in a carpeted cabin that had barely been opened and had already become very dirty does not help either, and all this was reflected in little interest on the part of the first visitors.
At a fair like this one, one always has the impression of having seen the same fair many times. But to end on a positive note (and I could go on, which Marco Godoy has made a neon in with the “Emosido deceived” meme), I will mention the project of Huanchaco in Espacio Valverde. An elongated and stony form appears reclining on a divan. Next to it, a chair with a huge horn speaker psychoanalyzes the character. It is a reproduction (reliable, although accommodated to the reclining posture) of the Lanzón de Chavín, a sacred monolith from ancient Peru. The poor man, out of place, listens as the gigantic speaker reminds him of the history of his creation, rediscovery and the details that highly intelligent experts have made about him. Impostor syndrome has also reached the gods.