In 1982, IFEMA commissioned Juana de Aizpuru, thereafter Juana de Arco, to launch the first edition of ARCO, the international contemporary art fair in Madrid. The first edition was inaugurated in February 1983 in a two-story building at the end of Paseo de la Castellana, past Plaza de Castilla, which was later demolished to erect a new building. I was lucky enough to participate in that first edition, which was very different from the current ones. Initially, far fewer galleries participated and the public was also smaller, not to mention sales that were practically nil.

The first two editions, as I said before, took place in the Paseo de la Castellana building and without a doubt, were quite neglected for all the participating galleries, which were still very few. People in Spain were not used to art fairs. I remember one year, I think it was the second, that Juana de Aizpuru came to our booth and asked me if we had a red dot, wow she had sold !! I told her that I had little faith, that how could she go to an art fair without red dots, but she, who was very smart told me: look dear, the red dots, in this fair, with one bringing them for the whole building is enough. And, unfortunately, she was right.

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Uno de los mejores regalos que me ha dado la vida fue que se cruzase en mi camino Chus Roig. Llevamos casi 30 años trabajando juntos y cada día agradezco a Dios y al destino este regalo. Aunque suene a tópico, es una magnífica persona, una gran amiga, una persona sensata y prudente y una gigantesca profesional que acaba de ser reconocidacon el Premio a la Mejor Galerista en los premios GGAC2020. El sector reconoce tu valía y mereces este premio y todos los aplausos del mundo. Chus te queremos. Nota: foto tomada hace años, tras cerrar Chus una singular venta en Arco cuando ya estábamos embalando y marchándonos.

A post shared by Carlos Duran Basté (@carlosgaleriasenda) on Feb 21, 2020 at 1:16am PST

In 1985, ARCO moved to the Palacio de Cristal de la Casa de Campo, larger and with better facilities, and important foreign galleries also began to participate. The public began to be much more abundant, actors start to attend, television presenters come, some truly interested, others simply to be seen. On weekends, collectors and art lovers from outside the capital are received, as well as entire busses of Fine Arts students from all Spanish cities.

I remember that in the first editions they used to give public announcements with the loudspeaker like: the director of the gallery X is requested to immediately attend in his stand, something quite annoying and that fortunately later disappeared. One day a well-known actress was taking a tour of the fair. Impossible not to notice her. She wore a blouse two sizes smaller than her size, a huge belt, what she was wearing could not be called a skirt, and shoes with heels that provoked vertigo. And suddenly the speakers were announced: The young lady (name of the actress) is asked to stop by the stand of Gallery X. And not once, but several times. So, if someone had not seen her walk, well, everybody already knew that she had been at the fair. Good publicity and also free.

ARCO has always been opened by the kings who visit some previously selected stands. In 1996 it was our turn. After a strict control and registration of the stand, security gave the go-ahead and Queen Sofia visited us. That year we presented a monograph by Gino Rubert and the visit was very entertaining. The queen stood before each work and asked Gino questions, who explained everything she asked for. Suddenly she stares at some artwork and addressing Gino she says: she looks like Irene Papas. In case someone from the entourage did not know who it was, she added. She is a wonderful Greek actress.

We could continue telling anecdotes that arose during the 38 editions of ARCO, talk about the galleries that have participated and the artists that have shown their works, but the best thing of all is to visit it, be there. I invite you to do it, surely you will not regret it.

Chus Roig in company of the artists

James Clar y Ola Kolehmainen, Arco Madrid 2012.

AES+F is pleased to announce their first major survey exhibition at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, Switzerland.

Active since 1987, the Russian collective AES+F,  Tatiana, Lev, Evgeny and Vladimir develops an open and prolific narrative universe, mixing classical reminiscences (mythological or religious allusions, references to western art from the Renaissance to the 18th century) and the aesthetic codes of today’s globalised world (video games, technology, fashion, cinema…).

Since The Last Riot, a video presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007, their work has focused on carefully-orchestrated digital photographs and from which they create spectacular immersive videos, genuine animated contemporary frescoes.

This syncretic and artificial universe, still in direct contact with the present-day world, is also materialised in the form of digital paintings, sculptures and drawings that update the consecrated forms of art history. Structured around their two most recent videos, Allegoria Sacra (2011-2013) and Inverso Mundus (2015), the exhibition offers visitors a full-on display through its panorama of the last ten years of this baroque and multifaceted artistic output, including digital paintings, sculptures and installations from several other recent series.

Opening: May 17th.
Curated by Lada Umstätter.

The Dra. Margareth dos Santos ( São Paulo University) presents ” A cartography of friendship” in which her proposes an in – depth reading of the the living and works of the catalan artist  during his decade of activity in Brasil. The post – doctoral research  bid to have a dialogical and organic look  around the Ponciana production in Brasil.

After years of having celebrated exhibits and developing projects together, Galeria Senda brings to light the second edition of Russian photographer Oleg Dou’s first monograph, introducing us to his new series produced between 2012 and 2016.

The first edition was published four years ago, when Dou was 28 years old. This includes some of his most remarkable works, such as Cubs (2009 – 2010) which demonstrates the results of curious mutations, the ghostly series Nuns (2006 – 2007) and the unsettling and experimental series Another Face (2011).

Oleg Dou says he uses photography as a medium to allow the spectator to enter a world that ranges between “what is beautiful and what is repulsive”. He is fascinated by the curiosities of the human face and the limits between reality and what is behind it, rendering that which is strange and different as a base of his aesthetics.

In our second edition, a new series called Mushroom Kingdom is presented. Here Dou demonstrates the adorably haunting faces of childhood, which, according to him, is  a time “full of clowns and monsters under the bed”. He also introduces the piercingly elegant series Heaven in My Body, which gives off traces inspired in the sacred and mystical art of the XV and XVI centuries, especially Madonna with a child (c. 1452). Currently, some of these works, within others, are being shown in the exhibit “Lonely Narcissus” in Moscow.

28|32 is the first monograph of this young artist, but it will not be the last. As the gallery owner Carlos Durán says in the prologue, “many other [of Dou’s monographs] will be brought to light in the years to come.” It is clear that Dou will continue to promote and develop his work and will never cease to surprise us.

vía artsy.

Imagine you’re an art collector (for some of you who already are, that won’t be very hard). Not a big-time buyer with a slew of lawyers to review a purchase, but someone looking for a work that strikes your fancy. And as you walk through the aisles of an art fair, suddenly you see a dazzling video projected onto the wall of a booth. You reach for the proverbial wallet. But right before the purchase takes place, from the depths of your mind a strange question materializes, one you might never ask yourself if you were buying a sculpture or a painting or a drawing: What are you actually buying when you buy a work of video art?

The answer isn’t quite what the uninitiated might expect. The tricky nature of video art has proven to be an unpleasant surprise for collectors in the past. In all likelihood, if you’re even asking this question it means you’re savvy enough to know something about the particular pitfalls of video art. “The first problem was that people didn’t understand what they were buying when they were buying a video,” says Carlos Durán, founding co-director of LOOP, the Barcelona-based art fair dedicated to video art. “Buying a piece is not buying the rights.” Recently, LOOP has released a non-legally binding protocol that artists, galleries, and collectors can use to discuss and clarify what a purchaser is and is not receiving when they buy a work of video art.

When it comes to video, it is the rights to the work that confer the powers and privileges typically associated with actual ownership of a piece of art. These rights reside not with a physical object but with the artist, so buying a USB stick in a fancy box from a gallery doesn’t necessarily transfer these rights. Thanks to the way copyright laws are formulated, video pieces are governed like a movie downloaded from iTunes—specifically, the artist retains the rights to data migration, exhibition, and distribution long after the work is sold. Stories abound of collectors trying to lend videos to museums only to be told that they cannot without the permission of the artist. Trouble can also arise when collectors try to move a video work from one format to another—say VHS to DVD. Again, this is the artist’s prerogative, though Durán says that today collectors copying and moving work is much more widely accepted than it was a few years ago.

Much of the protocol introduced in LOOP’s new initiative echoes how physical art is treated while attempting to address the specific challenges that come with video work. The protocol asks the parties (collectors, gallery, and artist) to agree to, among other things, the edition number of the video, technical details for installation, and channels through which the work has and will be distributed (to avoid it unexpectedly popping up on YouTube). Among the rights discussed and agreed to are those of copying and exhibiting the work, while the purchaser agrees to inform the artist when the work is being loaned or sold.

Such agreements are not required for most transactions involving paintings or other physical mediums, as they are automatically governed by a different set of legal strictures. Purchasing a sculpture generally means it can be lent to a museum by the owner. It can be shown off at a party. The collector can rest easy that infinite copies of it will not be made. And it will never face technological obsolescence and cease to be viewable. The case is markedly different for intangible video works.

Though a lack of transparency certainly isn’t foreign to the art market at large, the complex legal status of video art brings special challenges. The edition number, museum lending rights, and format of the piece are among the key aspects the document requires to be laid out in black and white. The goal is for the parties involved in the transaction to go through document together step-by-step, in order to ensure clarity and confidence between parties. According to Durán, the protocol was used in several sales at the most recent edition of LOOP in Barcelona. Even if confusions around video art are large, LOOP is betting that a simple, straightforward document can be part of solution.

Alain Servais—a longtime collector who has written on issues inherent to the video art market—is more skeptical. “Recognizing that something must be done is one step,” said Servais. “But I am positive that this is not what needs to be done as it does not begin from a sound and objective understanding of what ‘legal item’ art video is.” Servais argues that, because of their digital intangibility, videos simply cannot be governed like physical works, and that there are other contracts out there which legally secure your rights to a video, unlike the LOOP protocol. “Either it’s a contract, or it’s not. A contract is something you can challenge and enforce in court. This is what it should be.” For his part, Durán says that the protocol can be useful to those looking for clarity rather than a contractual obligation (the two are also not mutually exclusive and the fair offers a 17-page accompanying legal document).

LOOP itself is using the document to purchase a video by Ângela Ferreira that was shown at the fair. “We’re getting the exact details of the film—how exactly she’s going to send it to us (on what device, in what file format)—on paper, which is always tricky, especially when you think about the obsolescence of the technology in 10 years’ time. She’s also agreeing on something that is really important to us as a purchaser, which is that we can lend this work to institutions,” LOOP fair manager Anna Penalva Halpin told me. She also noted that the work is to go on view at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, adding that “[the protocol] is a way to set the conversation about all these things.” Indeed, though some disagree over what conversation must be had and about how to ultimately solve the issues surrounding video art, there is general agreement that if the market is to grow the discussion cannot wait.

As part of the Women’s Views Biennial  2016, galería  SENDA  has organized a talk focused on  life and work of Spanish artist Ángeles Santos Torroellla.

The  WVB-2016 it is an event that brings together different initiatives to show the creative activity of women and their large demonstrations in a national and international way. It’s taking place from March to December 2016, the Women’s Views Biennial will bring together initiatives that make women and gender issues a source for reflection, debate and creation.

Ángeles Santos Torroella is a painter  that  deserves an special place in the Spanish surrealist painting, born in Portbou in 1911, moves at sixteen years old to Valladolid where she takes painting classes and two years later created, whats it’s going to be  his first major work, Un Mundo,  large format oil that caused a sensation among the intellectual media of the time, particularly considering that the artist was a young woman living in the provinces, too far from the capital’s cultural scene to have come across any of the advances of the new art movements.  Currently this work is exposed as a permanent work in the National Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. In 1929 she has his first solo show at the Ateneo of Valladolid , since that she begins a long artistic career full of  ups and downs that ends after his dead in 2013.

Talk:  Life and work

Speakers:

 Anna Capella, art historian, curator of expositions , ex director of  the Museo del Empordà and  current director of   Museo of Mataró, author of the book  Ángeles Santos, Between life and painting (2011).

 Cristina Massanes, Journalist and writer , was curator of the exposition  (Re)visions del món. 100 anys d’Ángeles Santos Torroella (2011).

 Rosa Brugat, Visual art,  Author of the  video art Buenas noches, Inspired  in the paint, El mundo de Mª Santos Torroella, the video will be displayed after the talk.

Date: 7 julio 2016

Time:  19 hrs

Regarding this year’s topic of DOCfield>16 “Europe: Lost in translation”, Galeria SENDA has organised a series of conversations with interesting characters in the context of the work “Europa” by Jordi Bernadó.

In this project, Bernadó starts a journey through 27 cities, portraying landscapes and perspectives of the continent to create the book “Europa”. The following conversations are inspired in those images:

First talk: “Europe has not always existed”
Tuesday May 24^th, 2016. 19h.
Galeria Senda

Juanjo Lahuerta: He’s an Architect and professor of Art History and Architecture in the School of Architecture of Barcelona. He has been a member of the Collegio Docenti della Scuola Dottorati del Istituto Universitario di Architettura IUAV of Venice and has had the title of the Kina Juan Carlos I Chair of Spanish Culture and Civilization in New York University. He’s currently the Chief of Collection of MNAC.

Second talk: “Europe and its ghosts”
Monday June 13^th, 2016. 19h.
Galeria Senda

Valentín Roma: He holds a PhD in Philosophy and a BAS in Art History. He was the Head Curator of MACBA until 2015. In 2009, he won the contest to curate the first Catalonian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale. He’s currently the Director of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge.

Third talk: “Europe in the labyrinth”
Monday June 27^th, 2016. 19h.
Galeria Senda

Juan Corona: He holds a PhD in Economic Sciences; he’s a professor in Applied Economics and a permanent member of the Royal Academy of Doctors. Author of a vas work in economics and enterprises matters, he has also been an advisor for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and several programmes of the European Union.