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16/2/2010

ARCOMadrid

IFEMA - Feria de Madrid, Madrid

Feria de Madrid is holding the 29th International Contemporary Art Fair, ARCOmadrid_2010, from February 17th to 21st, making it once again the opening event in the international art fair calendar. This year the fair is hosting a total of 221 galleries from 25 countries and around three thousand artists with work covering all the current trends visible in the art world today. This year ARCOmadrid throws a special spotlight on its invitational programme, featuring a city for the very first time instead of a country. The focus this year is on Los Angeles, chosen because of its vitality and multiculturalism and its specific weight as one of the world’s art capitals.

ARCOmadrid is an excellent opportunity to rev up the engines of the art market, especially at a moment when we are seeing the first signs of recovery. According to latest reports from the Art Market Confidence Index (AMCI) drawn up by Artprice, prices have risen by 1.2% and the all- important confidence index among professionals is up by between 20% and 40% since last March. Working alongside a team of curators who are responsible for giving the fair its special character, the art fair’s planning committee has been working with the goal of driving the art market forward. It wishes to underscore its reputation as a high-quality event with a complete cross-section of art to excite the interest of collectors and buyers. In this regard, the fair has prepared a Guest Collectors programme in which it invites many major collectors from around the world to visit the fair and see what it has on offer.

Los Angeles, 21st century metropolis

One of the most noteworthy new introductions at the upcoming edition of ARCOmadrid_2010 is the focus on Los Angeles as the fair’s special invited guest. This is a new twist to its Panorama section, shifting from its usual focus on a country to a single city. The idea is present a more homogeneous portrait of what’s happening in a specific urban area that is, in itself, one of the major art capitals of the USA. It is L.A.’s dynamism energy and creative diversity that has situated it at the forefront of the world’s art market.

With a selection of 17 galleries, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, the difference in Panorama: Los Angeles lies in the selection of artists coming from different generations, backgrounds and degrees of fame, and a huge variety of works in terms of technique, genre and leaning. Above all else, the selection wished to faithfully reflect the vitality and diversity of the art scene in this great city. According to the curators, “this 21st century metropolis has an artistic culture with a huge cross-generational wealth, largely thanks to its influential position over the last few decades, its network of private art school and academies, as well as the art departments in public and private universities.”

General Programme + ARCO 40

The core section of ARCOmadrid_2010 comprises General Programme+ARCO40, featuring a selection of 165 galleries, chosen by the fair’s Advisory Committee and subsequently confirmed by the fair’s Planning Committee, showcasing works that provide a cross-section of the best of art from around the world.

ARCO40, a subsection of the General Programme, brings exciting young artists from Spain and worldwide into a fruitful creative dialogue. True to their core mission to showcase emerging talents, these galleries weave an international network of the happening art of today and tomorrow. Galleries in this section are showing work by a maximum of three artists, in fixed 40m2 modules. Exhibiting alongside the galleries in the main section, these new cutting-edge works are sure to capture the attention of the public and of collectors and buyers at the fair.

Curated Programmes

Besides the General Programme+ARCO 40, another cornerstone of ARCOmadrid_ 2010’s innovation is its curated programmes: SOLO PROJECTS, EXPANDED-BOX, CINEMALoop and PERFORMING ARCO which feature the latest trends in art.

Without any geographical or artistic boundaries, a team of 10 curators has been put together an eclectic selection of 34 projects for the SOLO PROJECTS section at ARCOmadrid_ 2010. Here we can expect to see the most emerging and experimental works of the moment. SOLO PROJECTS is predicated on conceptual discourses that look to explore and question the synergies of artists from all over the world and to open up a dialogue from highly diverse positions. This always interesting section contains a wealth of experimentation reflecting the concerns of contemporary artists.

This selection was made by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, freelance curator, Brazil; Juan de Nieves, freelance curator, Spain; Sergio Edelsztein, director of The Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv; Iván López Munuera, critic and freelance curator, Madrid; Shamin M. Momin, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Adriano Pedrosa, freelance curator, writer and editor, Brazil; Susanne Neubauer, freelance curator, Germany; Maria Inés Rodríguez, chief curator at MUSAC (León), curator of Programation Satellite at Jeu de Paume and editor of Point d’Ironie, Paris, France; André Magnin, freelance curator, Paris; and Olesya Turkina, critic and exhibition curator, and Senior Research Fellow at the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.

Yet again, this year ARCOmadrid_ 2010’s EXPANDED BOX programme is presenting works by artists using innovative new technologies and digital tools. The very best of new electronic art can be seen in the eight spaces comprising the EXPANDED BOX programme, curated by Italian art critic and independent curator, Domenico Quaranta and sponsored by BEEP_Data logic.

For the third year running, performance art has its own space at ARCOmadrid. The programme of PERFORMING ARCO, sponsored by Mango, and chosen by its artistic advisor Javier Duero, gives the visiting public a chance to contemplate various live performances and catch up with happening tendencies in live art taking place on the Spanish and international scene.

Rounding off the exciting curated programmes this year is CINEMALoop, a section dedicated exclusively to video art and audiovisual installations. Selected by the freelance curators, Carolina Grau and Paul Young, this section, coordinated for the first time with LOOP, the International Video Art Fair and Festival in Barcelona, is looking to consolidate the discourse of video at the art fair. CINEMALoop is divided into three sections: first of all, video installations brought by three European galleries; secondly, the loop screening of various video art pieces; and finally, an exhibition of videos on various individual screens which spectators can choose from.

Other presences

The final piece in the art fair is the section ARCO Instituciones, aimed at publicising the work of public and private organisations actively supporting the art world through collecting. Moreover, visitors have a space for publications on culture and art, especially contemporary art, all grouped together in the Art Publishers and Magazines sections.

In parallel with all these sections and programmes is the annual Experts Forum, now in its eight year, which brings together artists, collectors, critics, curators, theorists and other players in the art world to discuss issues of interest. The forum rounds off ARCOmadrid_ 2010, the International Contemporary Art Fair, a must visit event for anyone seriously interested in discovering the latest in contemporary art.

LOS ANGELES, GUEST CITY AT ARCOmadrid_ 2010

Seventeen galleries and a broad-ranging programme of exhibitions showcase the diversity and wealth of one of the USA’s main centres for the arts

The most noteworthy new introduction at ARCOmadrid_ 2010 is the focus on Los Angeles, one of the world’s epicentres for art right now, as the fair’s special invited guest. This is a new twist to its Panorama section, shifting from its usual focus on a country to a single city. The idea is present a more homogeneous portrait of what’s happening in a specific urban area that is, in itself, one of the major art capitals of the USA. It is L.A.’s dynamism energy and creative diversity that has situated it at the forefront of the world’s art market.

With the support of the City Council of Los Angeles and a selection of 17 galleries chosen by Kris Kuramitsu y Christopher Miles, PANORAMA: Los Angeles brings together “a huge variety of works in terms of technique, genre and leaning”, as the curators point out. Works created by “artists coming from different generations, backgrounds and degrees of fame” in a selection that is primarily looking for “vitality in all shapes and forms and trying to be as faithful as possible to the idea of offering a panorama of the city”, despite the fact that L.A. “constantly surprises us and that it is impossible to come up with any totalising viewpoint”, explained Kuramitsu and Miles. L.A., a city for art

“As a city for art, Los Angeles has become, and continues to be, a key centre for production, distribution and discourse at a time when centres are increasingly losing control and lacking in any kind of dominant school or movement”, the curators tell us. The movements that once defined cities, “have been replaced here by a plurality and promiscuity of activity that forecloses a monolithic identity”.

In point of truth, and as one will see at ARCOmadrid_ 2010, “though the history of art in L.A. is unquestionably shorter than that of many other cities, it is nevertheless dense and complex, mirroring an art scene that has reached adulthood –and we are not just speaking of artists, but also of its schools and museums, its alternative spaces, patrons and galleries– at a time of transition between the end of the modern age and postmodernism, determined by its own diversity and the plurality of an art practice that is predicated on the big changes that took place in the arts, academia and society as a whole”.

More specifically, one might well say that this 21st century metropolis “has an artistic culture with a huge cross-generational wealth, largely thanks to its influential position over the last few decades, its network of private art school and academies, as well as the art departments in public and private universities”, as the curators of Panorama: Los Angeles put it.

From West Side to Mid-City

This huge diversity is reflected in a selection of galleries that ranges from some of LA’s most veteran spaces to others that opened just a few years ago. A cross-section sampling the whole city, from the West Side to Mid-City and Downtown. “Although the selection of artists in Panorama: Los Angeles cannot be said to be exhaustive, nor would you say that it is reductionist”, claim Kuramitsu and Miles. “Our goal was to present diverse works in terms of media, genre and leaning, produced by artists of equally diverse origins, generations and fame”. A project primarily based on galleries but which, according to the curators, has its eyes firmly set on artists, so that “the section dedicated to LA at ARCOmadrid_ 2010 includes big galleries, but also showcases big artists”.

In fact the process of selection undertaken by the curators, “focused on a search for vitality in all shapes and forms and tried to be as faithful as possible to the idea of offering a panorama of the city that constantly surprises us and is impossible to sum up in any totalising viewpoint”.

Demonstrating the whole diversity of Los Angeles, the biggest and most populated city in California, ARCOmadrid_ 2010 will be hosting the galleries 1301PE, ACME GALLERY and STEVE TURNER, from the East-West quarter and PERES PROJECTS and CHERRY AND MARTIN from Mid City, in the dynamic La Cienega Design Quarter, a magnet for lovers of art and design.

Also travelling to Madrid, this time from Chinatown in LA, are THOMAS SOLOMON, CHINA ART OBJECTS GALLERIES, KATHRYN BRENNAN GALLERY, THE HAPPY LION and REDLING FINE ART. And coming from the mythical neighbourhood of Venice is L.A. LOUVER while Beverly Hills is represented by MARGO LEAVIN GALLERY and REGEN PROJECTS.

The visiting public will also come away with a good idea of the vitality of the metropolitan area of Los Angeles, which has countless thriving art centres like Culver City, in western Los Angeles county and the headquarters of the US branch of SUSANNE VIELMETTER –which also has a gallery in Berlin and has already exhibited at ARCOmadrid on several occasions. Furthermore, rounding off the selection made by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles are the galleries from Santa Monica, ROSAMUND FELSEN GALLERY, SHOSHANA WAYNE and CHRISTOPHER GRIMES GALLERY, a regular at ARCOmadrid over recent years.

Los Angeles, off ARCOmadrid

ARCOmadrid’s cultural programme oversteps the boundaries of the exhibition centre itself, because, similarly to other years, during the month of February the city of Madrid is a hotbed of exhibitions, performances and other cultural events focused on the fair’s invited guest, this year the city of Los Angeles.

A programme coordinated by the writer George Stolz together with the ARCOmadrid team, and curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, will round off the vision of Los Angeles on show from art galleries at the fair. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Matadero Madrid, Las Arquerías de Nuevos Ministerios and Instituto Cervantes are some of the cultural centres and museums which will be hosting various shows and other art events from Los Angeles during ARCOmadrid.

Los Angeles at the Experts Forum

The 8th Experts Forum brings together a roster of well-known artists, curators, theorists and other players in the art world to discuss issues of concern at the current moment in time, and also to contextualise the Panorama L.A. programme in the panel “Alternative Approaches to Presenting Art in Los Angeles” directed by Russell Ferguson, chair of the UCLA Department of Art (Los Angeles, USA), as well as with the participation of Jorge Pardo, a Cuban-American artist resident in Los Angeles, in “Conversations With Artists”.

LOS ANGELES, GUEST CITY AT ARCOmadrid_ 2010
Tie-in exhibition programme (updated December 15th)

- ALCALÁ 31 (Region of Madrid)
Exhibition of artist books by Ed Ruscha
Screening of “Civilization”, video by Marco Brambilla

- CANAL ISABEL II (Region of Madrid)
Exhibition of photographs by Julius Shulman on the architecture of Los Angeles

- LA CASA ENCENDIDA
Los Angeles Film Season curated by Thom Anderson

- FILMOTECA ESPAÑOLA - CINES DORÉ
A retrospective of the work of filmmaker David Lynch

- INSTITUTO CERVANTES
“Invisible City”, a group exhibition featuring artists from Los Angeles

- INTERMEDIAE
“Fallen Fruit”, a group exhibition featuring artists and environmentalists from Los Angeles

- MATADERO MADRID
A performance show by the artists collaborative My Barbarian
Installation by Doug Aitken

- MEDIALAB PRADO
“Open Up”: LED screens workshop with artists from Los Angeles

- LA ARQUERÍA - MINISTERIO DE VIVIENDA
A photography group exhibition with artists from Los Angeles

- MUSEO ESTEBAN VICENTE
Exhibition of the artist Robert Irwin

- MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA
Exhibition of the artist Mario García Torres
Selection of video works from the Getty Foundation
Season of films by the writer and filmmaker Kenneth Anger
A show of Los Angeles films

Chief Press Officer
Icíar Martínez de Lecea iciar.martinez@ifema.es
Press Officer & Media Liaison Marta Cacho Tel. (+34) 91 722 50 90 Dalda mcacho@ifema.es
International Press: Helena Valera Tel. (+34) 91 722 51 74 evalera@ifema.es

Professional visit 2 days Wednesday 17 & Thursday 18, from noon to 8 pm

Feria de Madrid
Parque Ferial Juan Carlos I, Madrid
Open to public: Friday 19th, Saturday 20th and Sunday 21th from noon to 8 p.m
General public Friday 19, Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 32 € (VAT included)
General Admission + Official Catalogue 66 € (VAT included)
Students 21 € (VAT included)
Student Admission + Official Catalogue 50 € (VAT included)

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