My Highlights from ARCOmadrid
This selection includes young artists whose work is just appearing in the fair, while other artists selected have been showing for years. I find it important to celebrate and look carefully at artists’ practices over time, to avoid only looking for the new. It is often hard to find the work of directly political artists represented within art fairs, so I am continually interested in highlighting artists who have a precarious relationship with the art market; while I am concurrently interested in artists who are aggressively formalist in their practice. My Selection:
Fabio Flaks, Fiesta!, 2013, at Galeria Pilar
It is unusual to find innovative uses of hyper-realism currently, but Flaks paintings fascinate. In our post-post-conceptual moment, her references to recent investigations of the readymade and everyday objects and banal interiors, find an elegant manifestation in her oil paintings. Fernanda Laguna, Ella está viva, 2013, at Nora Fisch
Fernanda Laguna is one of the most intriguing artists working today. These paintings form one part of a diverse multidisciplinary practice that includes poems, drawings, teaching, and curatorial projects. These paintings capture her mysterious view of the world, mixing kitsch with high modernism, Surrealism with sweet candies. Matt Mullican, Untitled (Elements), 2012, at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer
Matt Mullican’s continued influence on younger artists and his intriguing new productions, make him an artist of interest. His language and cosmologies continue to find fascinating representation.
João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, The corner edges of objects appear rounded at faraway distances, 2012, at Graça Brandão
Gusmāo and Paiva’s diverse production produces enigmatic reflections on the nature of perception and its materialization.
Carlos Motta,Nefandus, 2013, at Galeria Filomena Soares
Motta continually develops his practice in interesting and unexpected ways, engaging problematic histories and constructing important critiques on gender, sexuality and contemporary political strategies.
Tracey Rose, A Muster of Peacocks: THE SHOAH, 2012, at Dan Gunn
Irreverent, provocative, rough, and bold, Rose’s works continually annoy and irritate the viewer in productive ways regarding the contemporary perpetuations of imperialism.
Omar Barquet, The Tides (After H. W. Longfellow), 2014, at Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Barquet continues to make outstanding post-minimalist sculptures that mix personal narratives related to the sea, reflection, and the legacies of Constructivism.
Dora Garcia, The Joycean Society, 2013, at Galería Juana de Aizpuru
Garcia’s Joycean Society is an extensive and fascinating project. She uses texts and multiple histories to actively produce new forms of knowledge and criticality regarding art as a marginal practice.
