SPECIAL REPORT: live (art) trends from Madrid 🫒🌹🇪🇸

A journey to Spain's capital for an epic art extravaganza.

Explore previous special city and art reports, including Paris, Marseille, and Barcelona. Totally share this newsletter if you ~love~ it bb 🤭

I spent the last week in Madrid, which was my second time there and the first when the city was fully “on.” Meaning: Bobby Aaron Solomon and I had visited for New Year’s a few years back, when the city was effectively on low power mode, when all the locals were visiting family, and it was…not that interesting? Or, this is to say: it was without its spark, without its life, which is a key thing to know as literally everyone we’ve met in Spain has told us that we would love Madrid and that we very well should be there.

I’m happy to report that, even after a full seven days of non-stop rain that rivalled that of London or Paris, Madrid delivered. It’s a city known for its outgoingness and for its being a place where people are down for anything. While there was no friendship meet-cute at a bar or café as I had dreamt, everyone I met was so giving, interesting, and generally the sweetest of the sweet. They charmed and showed that, yes, you can do a lot of community building in seven days — more than I’ve been able to do in the near three years of being in a city that’s three hours away. Things that make you go hmmmm (although the lesson here is to do specific outreach with a specific goal in mind, a la: “I’m Kyle and I’d love to interview you!” — which is a much clearer social contract than the wishy-washy “hewwoo u r kewl 😊” which is more creepy than complimentary).

Over seven days, I met with eight people, the majority of whom were by happenstance, by recommendation of another person who I had plans to meet with. The result is an embarrassment of riches as interview subjects go. It’s a good survey of creatives doing interesting things in the Madrid area, I think, even if it’s obviously just a handful. If you do anything in this post, please microdose these interviews throughout the week as I put my whole Kylussy into them, sacrificing my weekend to get them done (which is a me problem) (but still). They’re all free too! These interviews include —

• An interview with industrial designer Sina Sohrab, whom I had been following for years given his work as the 1080P musician Saffron. I was hoping to get the backstory on his work — and to hear how his industrial design ties into music.

• An interview with architect Omar Miranda, whose spaces and sensibility are sexy, queer, and now, with healthy splashes of 1980s elegance. I’m a huge fan of his lingerie lamps via Sudor, a project he and fashion designer Ruben Gomez have been doing for the past year.

• A profile of the restaurant Rapaz, via friend Rita Juárez who started the restaurant with friends of hers. Hidden within one of Conde Duque’s markets, we stopped by for a Saturday lunch for a homey taste of northern Spain.

• A studio visit profile with Roberto Rivadeneira, a new-to-Madrid (via Berlin, via Ecuador) artist whose works explore the negotiations we make between the real world and the technologic world.

• A studio visit profile with Simón Sepulveda, a Madrid-via-Chile artist who straddles a design practice with a flourishing studio practice that has him creating large-scale works that explore radical rebellion.

• A studio visit profile with Cristobal Ascensio Ramos and Catara Rego, a Mexican and a Galician photographer, respectively, who are both exploring the histories of people in places through two very different means.

• A gallery visit profile of Sabrina Amrani’s showing of Carlos Aires’ BLIND, a show that explores life and death and the highs of lows of living from an exciting gallery in Madrid’s top neighborhood for art.

Phew. It’s a lot to get through! Take your time reading them because there’s oodles going on: if you’re bored and or are looking for some creative inspo, I got you covered.

Outside of these visits, we were in Madrid for the city’s annual contemporary art week, which is a Frieze-less wonder that shows just how powerful local art markets are — and that these really are markets, that the area of southern Europe (along with South/Central American and Taiwan, the two other zones that were most-represented) have a thriving scene that is perfectly content to support itself. There were four shows, which I’m sharing in the order that I visited: JustMad, which was the smallest and featured the scrappiest and most rambunctious galleries of all the fairs; Art Madrid, which was the most “adult” in that it straddled commercial whims and more contemporary expressions, all housed within the mesmerizing Galería de Cristal; UVNT (Urvanity), the most contemporary of the bunch that seemed most likely to slip into an art week in Los Angeles or New York; and Arco, the Iberian answer to Frieze that is overwhelmingly large and surprisingly hyper-contemporary without feeling flat. Together, they offered a thrilling survey of what it means to be an artist making in Spain — but also Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, and England with touches of Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, South Korea, Taiwan, Dubai, Iran, and lots, lots more.

My biggest takeaway — which I haven’t felt in all my years of attending art fairs in various cities but had upon entering Arco, on my third day of attending fairs which was housed in the convention center at the far end of the city, in a mega-venue that threatens to become its own municipality — is that there is too much art. There was a lot of good, there was some bad, but the feeling was that there is just a lot, a lot, a lot of art, to the point that one day last week, after we attended two fairs and had four studio visits, my eyes ached to look at nothing, a feeling that doesn’t even happen after staring at a computer all day. I was exhausted from seeing art, fatigued by there being — frankly — too much. That’s less a problem with the fairs but, when we zoom out, to consider that Paris and London and Miami and Los Angeles and New York and Mexico City and Shanghai and Seoul and so many more cities have art fair weeks in the same way that fashion weeks happen in Paris and London and New York and Milan and Copenhagen and beyond: it makes you realize that, fuck, there are so many artists and so many things that are made that probably will find homes but very well may not. This is less about having “too many artists” or creations but that the art market — which is not in a good place and hasn’t been in a good place for some time — is over-saturated much in the way that Hollywood and fashion and books and literally every field in the world right now is oversaturated and decaying: we are absolutely glutted. Too much of a good thing! Bewildered by beauty, as I felt at physically this past week. But this context is important because, no matter if the art were accessible and commercial or cutting edge conceptual contemporary, the art that was on display was responding to “this,” whether it intended to or not.

Left to right: Julian Brangold, Katarina Arndt, Lucía Astuy, Pauline Curnier Jardin

For example: so much of the work across fairs, largely by young artists, seemed to question why they were being made. The art, the artist as a human, the tools and technology with which we use every day: why? It was a very Barbie “what was I made for” experience, as artists and art struggled to come to proper conclusions of why we have done what we’ve done as people, as a society, to get where we are today. Pauline Curnier Jardin’s Miracle Ma Baby, a series of warped church candles that seemed to explode from their altar, at Arco’s ChertLüdde questioned our most common ideology: Christianity. Julian Brangold’s Angeles de la historia at UVNT’s Valerie’s Factory wondered, via digital collages of emojis and swelling Photoshop disasters, what a history online is if it’s going to make for messy adults, which was echoed by Mandy Shadows’ self-portraits with anime and Apple UI at JustMad’s Arias Rego Contemporary. Katarina Arndt’s silly-playful paintings at Art Madrid’s Ting Ting and Lucía Astuy’s child’s play paintings at JustMad’s Canal Gallery suggested that the muscle memory of childlike creations never leave us — but why would they, in these times of wanting to “go back to childhood”? The little feet of and lace-trimmed socks of Raquel Jiménez Molina at UVNT’s mxm galeria were coy about the answer, perhaps even concerned with there even being an answer at all. These works were largely made by Millennial and Gen Z artists, unsurprising given their kidult tendencies; yet, instead of making shitty Kaws ripoffs (which were, at all fairs, by the way), they’re using their work to self-therapize, to understand why we are how we are. The most moving piece was Nicolás Lamas’ Cultural sediments at Arco’s the goma which displayed a chipping terracotta pot placed upon a clear, plexiglass shelf that broke down the pot’s fallen pieces down to dust. What was I made for? the work asked, both of the artist but also of the history of art. Look at everything that I am. Why did you make me? It was a question that seemed to be asked again and again, delivered with the ferocity of Tina’s “Why did you adopt me?” from Mommy Dearest.

Left to right: Alexander Grahovsky, José Luis Carranza, Adéle Aproh

If it wasn’t artists debating themselves and who they were, it was debating the now — which is rarely done so straightforwardly, another symptom of artists wondering what’s this life, what’s this point in time, a post-post-post whatever movement that sees artists in their enclosures making their own fantastic worlds instead of trying to capture the now. Remember: there was a time when almost all art reflected life. Still lives and portraits that eventually became blurred by expressionism, which was made blocky and unreal from cubism through surrealism through post-modernism. Where does that leave us? With art that is building new worlds, where Hieronymus Bosch blushes at how prolific a parent he is now: Alexander Grahovsky’s meandering Midsummar epics at ArtMadrid’s Galeria BAT; José Luis Carranza’s evil elven epics that were something between orcs and fairies at UVNT’s Klaus Steinmetz; Adèle Aproh claustrophobic glamor circuses at UVNT’s mxm galeria; Amanda Tejo Viviani’s swirling, atmospheric scenes of thought at UVNT’s nn; Aldo Urbano’s full room of tarot-via-church debacles at Acro’s bombon. Who wants to be in the shit that we all have to live in, day in and day out? Escape! Now!! If you’re able too!!! But, unlike the people who use AI to tap out, these artists are painting their way out of this mess, inviting you to wander with them. There was realism and real problems too — Udatxo’s street life at JustMad’s Arteupdate and Diego Vallejo-Garcia quick motion street scenes at ArtMadrid’s Shiras Galería come to mind — but no one wanted to depict the now, directly. It was clear that no one wants the present that we have. It’s overwhelmingly, life these days, so sad to the point of needing an escape, to exaggerate and play. Who wants to still this life?

From left to right: Carmen Benea, Ting Tong Chang, the scene at JustMad

Then there were the works that didn’t want to be painting anymore, which is a theme I started tracking at last fall’s Swab: there were many paintings, yes, but not as much sculpture and even less video art. The thing is that not all the paintings “were paintings” in that the form of the painting was being used as a venue for sewing and tiling and ceramics and anything but painting. Reminding very much of what Alika Cooper was doing a decade or so ago, every show had a series of stitched and pillowed and textile-rich works that were paintings but also not, that were tapestries but not, that wondering what the point of painting is: Ting Tong Chang’s quilts-as-graffiti at JustMad’s DOM; Pablo Ozo’s ceramic tile “paintings” or painted ceramic “tiles” at JustMad’s Untitled Gallery; Carmen Baena’s stitched and sewn shape studies at Art Madrid’s Galería BAT; Vladimir maruts Ballet’s quilted cars at UVNT’s Valeries Factory; Guido Yannitto’s swirling yarn studies at Arco’s Galería Remota; Adelaide Cioni’s consumed-by-the-sewn booth at Arco’s P420. Perhaps the best summation was a painting that truly wasn’t: Emma Roche’s showing at Arco’s Brigitte Mulholland, a post-painting that used acrylic paint as a knitting material. The effect felt like looking at portraits made through plastic links which, in a way, is and isn’t what acrylic is, which is to say: what is a painting anyway? What are the parts that we use? Why do we use them? How is a painting different from gasoline? Again: what is the point of this?

Left to right: the scene at Arco and Adelaide Cioni at P420

And yet, despite all this, the most definitive happening of the fairs weren’t what exactly was being depicted but, like the non-painted paintings, what gestures were being made. Art, like all of us in these technologic times, are going through a crisis not just of things-not-selling but of proposed value to viewers, buyers, other humans, and the whole of history: if ChatGPT — or whatever the fuck AI — is making the visual world “irrelevant,” then art needs to lipsync for its life, proving its worth, making the case that it isn’t just some “pretty” thing but that it too can do a job. There were so many works of art that “had jobs” or were depicting labor in literal ways — Stine Deja’s manual labor machines at Arco’s Florit/Florit, Santiago Colombo Migliorero’s endless mechanized staircases at JustMad’s DOM — but most were expressed in subtle, non-literal ways that suggested beauty and placement in life. Examples: there was an abundance of light-fixtures-as-art or works that “are” light fixtures, which is a suggestion that art cannot exist on its own anymore, that it has to be turned on to light a room, doing something more than just sit there and look pretty. Even art has a side-hustle! How sad is that? Just ask Tobias Rehberger’s big red lights at Arco’s Pedro Cera or Koenraad Dedobbeleer’s blob lamps at Arco’s Mai 36, two items that turned down the artists’ ostensible experimentation in favor of easy access to people designing their space for TikTok or magazine spreads. Pop culture figures now pull double duty too (Miguel Scheroff’s casting of Pikachu at UVNT’s Yusto/Giner) along with art stars of the past, whose graves are robbed by showing their own work or by artists who are so inspired to make history their own (Moises Yagües’s “constructions” of art icons at Art Madrid’s Aurora Vigil-Escalera Galería de Arte).

Left to right: Nicolás Lamas, Emma Roche, Elena Aitzkoa

This naturally dovetails into the splatter painted elephant in the room: sustainability. If anyone was wondering if we need any of this in these fucked up times, the answer is in the materials and subjects yet again as more and more artists were tackling issues of consumption, using waste as an artistic resource, the most brutal mirror one could imagine. This isn’t new but there was an urgency, a boldness to how this idea is manifesting now, which I saw mostly at Arco: Melinda Fourn knit and sewed trash like used coffee filters and tea bags to create tiny tapestries for Seleb Yoon; Mario Sergio Alvarez painted hunting dogs and water fowl on the backs of “found furniture,” all wood, all old, all antique, all unwanted, at diez; Elena Aitzkoa’s sculptures were beautiful rot consisting of towels and rope and other fabrics that suggested the tragi-comedy of waste, via Rosa Santos. The waste went beyond objects too: wasted history, via Javier Inés’ queer histories of Barcelona at RocioSantaCruz; and wasted cultures, via Marcelo Brodsky’s depiction of Amazonian scenes that were destroyed, asking viewers if their demise is factor or fiction, at Rolf; wasted youth, as seen…everywhere. Again: why? The world burns and yet we, smiling, sip Ruinart and look at sponsored, painted Lexus SUVs, hoping that we will survive to zip off to the next fair. That is and isn’t the point of all this, right?

That, friends, is what the Madrid art fairs were like, what they were saying to me — and you know I’m a positive realist. Was it worth going to? Yes. Of course! But, like Michelin restaurants in 2025, something’s not-right — and it’s these excesses that make the heart grow less fond, that suggest end times are near. These are scenes from the tipping point, you could say.

So! You might be wondering: What did we eat? Where did we drink? What trends were spotted on-the-street? Well…I have some for you — but that’s for paid readers only. Toodles, to everyone else! Let’s go, paid grrls, who will also get a tease of the cities we’re headed to next, where we’ll be having more meet-ups 😎