Galería Espiral, a veteran of the Art Madrid fair, proposes in this edition, a trip to the creative universes of four artists that represent in their artwork different discursive lines, but all with a clear tendency towards the purest abstraction. A common element in the work of these artists (all from the same generation) is their personal search, an imperative need that distances them from the common. They are: Nacho Angulo, José Carlos Balanza, Luis Medina and Eduardo Vega de Seoane. Artists who make us see.

The artists of Madrid Nacho Angulo and Eduardo Vega de Seoane have been present in almost all the exhibition proposals of Galería Espiral for Art Madrid. In this way, we have been able to see the evolution in the creative language of both over the years, culminating in solid creations in which the questions remain. The multidisciplinary artist José Carlos Balanza has a long artistic career. For his part, the artist, formerly an industrial engineer, Luis Medina, has participated in numerous individual exhibitions in Spain.

José Carlos Balanza

E281119, 2019

Baldosa, Acero, Pintura y Hierro

20 x 73cm

Luis Medina

Space 7, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

50 x 50cm

Nacho Angulo (Madrid, 1950), trained as a painter with Martín Sáez, a friend of his father, who later studied architecture with Arturo Pardos at an academy where some of the best known artists of his generation passed through.

Angulo uses wood as a main component, creating his own language. From this organic material, he plays with textures and distribution in space.

"His paintings are constructed by layers, by times, handling rhythms of his passion for music, dark silences and vivid colours of rhizomes, "time and space", of his admired Deleuze. "To be carpintor", as he has named himself in so many occasions, leads us to think of someone who builds his paintings with wood, neither beautiful nor elegant wood, but wood from industry, from the work, from our hurried and recycled time..." (this is how Luis Martos defines the artist in a recent catalogue).

Nacho Angulo

La rueda roja, 2013

Técnica Mixta sobre madera

100 x 100cm

The sculptor José Carlos Balanza (Logroño, 1958), has extensive experience in individual and group exhibitions. His pieces are part of important collections such as the Würth Museum in La Rioja, the Margarita Montferrato Foundation in Balaguer or the Antonio Saura Foundation in Cuenca.

Balanza is based on conceptual approaches revealed in sculpture, mainly in iron, where the time of the welding bow itself becomes the pencil and brush that give testimony of his own life. In his latest works, he moves away from iron, opening up to new materials: industrial ceramics, screws and a kind of rubber-paint with a metal mesh structure, as a material with a strange appearance and peculiar flexibility by means of which he achieves that special expressiveness, creating partial objects, flyers on black ceramic spaces, dark kitchen and infinite cosmos.

"The resulting object as the beginning and end of the sum of all that makes up the distance, which is defined by the drawing of my life, by the sum of each and every one of the structures that have been necessary to walk on them, with all that I am in order to arrive."

Eduardo Vega de Seoane

En el jardín, 2019

Acrílico, Óleo y Collage sobre lienzo

130 x 97cm

Luis Medina (Santander, 1955), premiered in Art Madrid with Espiral Gallery. Medina's artistic personality is more formalistic and normative than that of his booth colleagues. His education is more technical, coming from industrial engineering, but his abstraction is not rigorous but experimental, widely colourful, playing a kind and almost musical side of the geometric field.

The colour is a fundamental element in the work of the artist from Santander, through chromatic games, Luis Medina expresses and creates a minimalist perspective. Always looking for a balance in the composition; sometimes the line, the planes, the geometry in sum, appropriates his expressive discourse. Sometimes he approaches the lyrical abstraction where the pure feeling of colour can overcome everything.

Luis Medina

NG8, 2019

Acrílico papel

102 x 76cm

The exhibition proposal of the Cantabrian gallery is completed with the artist Eduardo Vega de Seoane (Madrid, 1955), who has a consolidated career as a painter both in Spain and in Europe, mainly in Germany, where he exhibits frequently and enjoys well-deserved recognition. His extensive artistic career has led him to participate in important international fairs in Zurich, Chicago, Washington, Germany, Holland and Belgium.

Vega de Seoane's artwork oscillates between abstract expressionism and neo-informalism, although he avoids definition. In his work we can see a hidden geometry that keeps every moment in its place. In his paintings he lives the rhythm. "I like the fact that we do not know what will happen next, as in nature one lives the landscape from life to death by itself ."

The contemporary art scene in Madrid, like the city itself, never stops evolving. Art Madrid, now in its twentieth edition, taking place from March 5 to 9 at the Glass Gallery of the Palacio de Cibeles, not only showcases the latest artistic trends but also invites us to question how we inhabit the world.

Miska-Mohmmed. Suburbs. 2022. Courtesy of OOA Gallery.

After a year of dedicated work organizing this new edition, we find ourselves at the peak of the process: the fair is about to begin. Having overcome the most challenging stages, we are fully aware of our mission—to be the platform that connects a vast diversity of artists with the public. We want their voices to reach you, whether through our communication efforts or your visit to the fair. This year, Art Madrid brings together nearly two hundred artists from twenty-seven countries, represented by thirty-four galleries from ten nations. From Taiwan to Mexico; from Cuba to Portugal; from Italy to Brazil; from Japan to Spain—tracing a route through the Dominican Republic, Peru, Germany, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Belgium, Poland, the Congo, the Netherlands, Morocco, Argentina, Slovakia, Sudan, Austria, and Serbia. The wealth and diversity we are exposed to over these five days indicate that today's maps are shifting—or changing color, as the troubadour sings in that song. We are no longer talking only about physical borders; today's maps are fluid and transitory. They represent our identity, our memory, and our human connections.

Ruddy Taveras. The Key to the treasure. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Luisa Pita.

The artists at Art Madrid, through works ranging from painting to installation, invite us to explore this uncertainty, to question ourselves, and, above all, to discover new possibilities.

Historically, maps have been tools for understanding space and locating ourselves in the world. However, today more than ever, those maps, like the territories they represent, are open to question—they have mutated, digitized, and fragmented. And as this happens, art continues to be the medium through which, paradoxically, we can find points of reference, direction, and meaning. Art Madrid, like other major events that reflect the pulse of contemporary art, is not immune to this reconfiguration.

Khalid El Bekay. Africa. Diptych. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Espiral.

In a sector that sometimes falls into inertia, we ask ourselves how to bring together so many perspectives, styles, and discourses in the same space for five days. That question leads us to a broader reflection on the geographical and ideological boundaries we inhabit today.

The thirty-four participating galleries introduce us to a universe of creators who, though diverse in technique and approach, share a common concern: the need to reinterpret the world from new perspectives. What once seemed immutable is now in constant flux. Globalization, technology, politics, and the climate crisis have altered the maps that once guided us. But in every change, there is an opportunity—a territory for creation. And that is where art comes in: as a vehicle for imagining new cartographies.

Maps, like identities, are constructions in constant evolution. Instead of marking borders, art today invites us to erase them. With more than thirty international galleries in attendance, Art Madrid reinforces its global character and its ability to transcend geography. Here, artists do not work on pre-existing maps; they reinvent them with each creation.

Francesca Poza. Emotions. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Alba Cabrera.

The works presented at the fair are not confined to a single medium. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and new technologies, artists explore how we position ourselves in a world where traditional structures are increasingly fluid. They do not seek easy answers but pose essential questions: What does it mean to belong to a territory today? How do globalization, the climate crisis, and the digital era affect us?

Art Madrid becomes a space where creators engage with the major questions of our time—from the geopolitical to the emotional. Their works are not just meant to be contemplated; they provoke, shake, and transform.

Okuda San Miguel. Born to Be an Angel. 2023. Courtesy of 3 Punts Galería.

The borders of art, like those of maps, are no longer fixed. That is the challenge the fair presents this year: to question them, expand them, and redefine the role of art in a constantly changing world.

In this reconfiguration, Art Madrid positions itself as a space where the voices of contemporary art help us redraw the map of humanity, both in its physical and emotional dimensions. Because today, true borders are not just geographical—they are also cultural, digital, and symbolic. And being an open window to that experimental exercise that is making art, is precisely the space where those borders can be subverted and even crossed.