ARCO Madrid (I.G. @feriaarco), the largest and most visited art fair in southern Europe, finished this past Sunday its most atypic edition. The pandemic has affected the art market but the Spanish fair closed its doors with a great outcome, as the director Maribel López has said, the organization and gallerists were very happy and satisfied to see the market reactivating.
The fair hosted 130 galleries, a lot less than they usually do, and due to covid measurement, it took place on the pavilions 7 and 9 at IFEMA with more space between booths. Coming from 26 different countries; Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, USA, but also Latin American; Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Perú, and Venezuela. In these two pavilions contemporary art lived together for 5 days under the eyes of art collectors, artists, and visitors.
This year ARCO Madrid aimed to give more visibility and increase the presence of women using specific spaces around the fair under the name of Proyetos de Artista. A total of 25 projects exclusively produced by women. Works from Alexandra Karakashian -Sabrina Amrani-; Dominique González Foerster – Albarrán Bourdais-; Beth Moysés -Fernando Pradilla-; Sophie Ristelhueber – Jérôme Poggi-; Jessica Stockholde -Max Estrella-; Kristin Wenzel – Suprainfinit-; Isabel Villar -Fernández-Braso-; Magda Bolumar -Marc Domènech-; Maja Bajevic -Peter Kilchman.
As any other contemporary art fair, a lot of different backgrounds and styles are shown together, and after crossing through all gallery booths I wanted to show some of the pieces that caught my eye; mixed technics as we can appreciate on Irene Infantes experimental surface made out wool merino and wool borra on cotton, the fun and rebellious contrast that created the pieces shown at Galeria L21 and Galeria Fran Reus, the visually appealing photographs from Paul Hutchinson that make time stop capturing the little things from common life, and the sarcastic and critic Human Rights ashes from Eugenio Merino that were also shown with other two of his pieces; Human Rights poster printed on a garbage bag, and passport stamped on thermic blankets.
by Aleix Moyano amoyano@vanityteen.com
Paul Hutchinson / Galerie Russi Klenner – Berlin Richie Culver / L21 Galeria – Mallorca Richie Culver / L21 Galeria – Mallorca Irene Infantes / Alarcón Criado – Seville Bel Fullana / Galeria Fran Reus – Mallorca Paul Hutchinson / Galerie Russi Klenner – Berlin
