As every year, the Selection Committee of Art Madrid is in charge of assessing the applications of the galleries interested in participating in the general program of the fair. The team consists of renowned professionals in the contemporary art sector with a variety of profiles that reflects the diversity of the current cultural fabric. From curators, to critics, to representatives of the galleries, the purpose is to analyse the content of the proposals and select those that offer, for the whole fair, the most innovative, solvent and highest artistic quality in a process that takes into account, not only the career of the galleries and their professional performance, but also the coherence of the exhibition program for the fair, the career of the artists presented, or their consideration into the national and international creative panorama.

Image of Art Madrid'19, by Imanol Villota

The permanent work of Art Madrid has made it possible to improve its exhibition proposal in recent years. As Alfonso de la Torre noted with respect to the previous edition, the fair is characterised "by a notorious rigour of the selection of galleries and proposals (...). Innovative proposals and rigour, without excluding emotion, why not, have proved to be the support of the ideas of a renewed ART MADRID ".

In 2020 Art Madrid once again will count on the always accurate criteria of Ángel Samblancat, Alfonso de la Torre, Carlos Delgado Mayordomo and Javier López. Aurora Vigil-Escalera and Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta join this year the Committee.

Aurora Vigil-Escalera is the director of the homonymous gallery located in Gijón and has a very extensive career as a professional initiated within the family, because her father had founded and directed the Van Dyck gallery in which she began her career as a partner in 1984. This permanent connection with contemporary art has led the work of Aurora Vigil-Escalera, focused mainly on painting, sculpture and photography, who not only maintains regular programming in her space of Gijón, but has also focused on projecting work of its artists beyond our borders. This provides her with an exhaustive knowledge of contemporary reality in the global context and an accurate criterion to identify trends and support young talents from the beginning of their career.

Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta joins the Art Madrid project as curator of the One Project section, and will also contribute his experience and knowledge in the selection process for 2020. Fernando is an independent curator and critic with a long career. He has developed his professional profile in different contexts linked to contemporary art, both in the institutional field and the art market, and has extensive experience in working with artists. The direction of the PalmaPhoto photography festival, and the curating of CRIdA (residence of artists of the City Council of Palma), the I Festival of Contemporary Art of Saltillo-Mexico, and the MARTE Contemporary Art Fair are among his latest experiences. It also outstands his work as a teacher, speaker and coordinator of several training programs, workshops, conferences and seminars, mainly linked to universities, museums and contemporary art centres.

Alfonso de la Torre is a theoretician and art critic, specialising in contemporary Spanish art. He has curated numerous exhibitions, in addition to published essays and poetry and taught courses in centres such as the Reina Sofía Museum, the Teruel Museum, the University of the Andes, the University of Córdoba, the University of Granada, the University of Castilla-La Mancha or the Université de La Sorbonne. In his extensive experience, he has been the author of reasoned catalogues of artists such as Millares, the group "El Paso", Manuel Rivera and Palazuelo. From 2005 he curates an annual program of artistic interventions in the public space ("Ámbito Cultural-El Corte Inglés") during ARCOmadrid, with the collaboration of the regional government and the city hall of Madrid. He has coordinated one of the most complete studies on the birth and evolution of the art market in Spain from the postwar period to the present ("La España del Siglo XXI" (Sistema Foundation). In addition to directing the collection of photographic essays "El ojo que ves"(University of Córdoba-La Fábrica), he is Vice-president of the Pilar Citoler Foundation and responsible for the conservation of her Collection.

Carlos Delgado Mayordomo is a curator of contemporary art, as well as a critic and professor. His vertiginous career has developed mainly in the field of institutional curatorship in Spain and Latin America, where he has worked with numerous museums and cultural centres. He is currently art critic at ABC Cultural, professor of the Master in Art Market of the Nebrija University and responsible for exhibitions of the Department of Culture of the City of Las Rozas of Madrid. He has coordinated exhibition projects at the Fundación Fondo Internacional de las Artes / FIArt, the Cidade da Cultura Foundation of Santiago de Compostela, Tabacalera Promoción del Arte, DA2 Salamanca Art Centre and the Tomás y Valiente Art Centre, among many others. Also, his work as a critic and theoretician has led to numerous research articles in specialised journals and publications in collective books. Between 2014 and 2018 he joined as a curator of the One Project section of Art Madrid, and since then he has been part of the Selection Committee of the fair.

Ángel Samblancat has an extensive career devoted entirely to contemporary art. Besides his work at the head of the Editorial and Gallery of Art Polígrafa Obra Gráfica of Barcelona for more than forty years, he was also assistant to the director of the Joan Prats Gallery (Barcelona) since its foundation. The experience of Ángel in technical and selection committees is extensive. He was member of the Jury for the Graphic Work Triennial of Grenchen (Switzerland) and was part of the selection committees of international fairs of high prestige such as Art Chicago (Illinois), Art Miami (Florida), Art Los Angeles (California), ARCO (Madrid), Art Cologne (Germany), Art Basel (Switzerland), ArtBo-Bogotá (Colombia) and Art Basel / Miami Beach (Florida). He has also developed as a critic and consultant in large art collections.

Javier López Vélez is the director of 3 Punts Art Gallery, based in Barcelona. He is an expert in Technical Drawing of Projects and has studied Sociology. Throughout his career, he has worked as an independent curator in several institutional exhibitions in Barcelona, Hospitalet and Andorra. Under his direction, the gallery maintains a complete program of exhibitions that includes between seven and eight individual shows a year, with a clear evolution towards the new artistic languages. In addition, the Gallery 3 Punts has made a strong commitment to gain international presence and help consolidate the career of national artists beyond our borders through participation in fairs such as Kunstrai Amsterdam, Context Miami, Context Art New York or Art Stage Singapore, among many others, a work to which they have been faithful for more than two decades.

Alexander Grahovsky

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARISOL SALANOVA. INTERVIEW PROGRAM. ART MADRID’25

Alexander Grahovsky (Alicante, 1980) begins with a chaotic or random process, similar to collecting images and creating collages from scenes that capture his interest, which he can then recreate as he pleases. His works explore themes such as the unknown, death, and animals, often drawing parallels with toys and incorporating recurring characters along with elements like floating stones. Narrative plays a crucial role in his paintings; the surrealist aspect emerges from the way he constructs a non-linear story. Scenes overlap, appear in different phases across various sections of each painting, and invite the viewer’s eye to roam through the composition. His work contains references to classical painting and cinema, making its interpretation dependent on the viewer's personal background and emotional state. The central thread of his art conveys that, despite life’s hardships, we all continue to celebrate in some way.

The Lighthouse at the End of the Ocean. 2024. Mixed media. 190 x 140 cm.

What role does experimentation play in your creative process?

Experimentation plays a fundamental role in my entire creative process on two levels: technical and narrative. On a technical level, because I allow myself a range of liberties or aesthetic whims that turn the act of painting itself into a game—something enjoyable where, in a way, anything is possible. On a narrative level, it’s about how I build stories, as there is no script or main idea holding everything together. Instead, starting from a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, I try to construct a story that intertwines, compelling the viewer, in some sense, to contribute their own interpretation or create their own narrative.

What are your references?

My influences range from classical painting, such as The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch or The Ghent Altarpiece, to more contemporary artists like Hurvin Anderson and Dominique Fung, including Hopper, Hockney, and Leonora Carrington, among countless others. All these artistic influences blend with others from cinema, including the films of Parajanov and the director of Midsommar. Particularly, Midsommar has been quite influential in my work for its distinctive aesthetic. Additionally, the world of comics plays a role, particularly the work of Moebius, especially his more surrealist science fiction illustrations. Video games are another source of inspiration, especially in how scenes are depicted—everything is flattened, as if it were a screen or the backdrop of a theater stage, reminiscent of mid-to-late-90s graphic adventure games.

A Brief Story of an Embrace. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 33 x 41 cm.

How do you create the distinct—and sometimes recurring—characters in your paintings?

The characters develop as the body of work evolves, as if each painting were part of a larger story yet to be told. As I began working in this style, I noticed that many of them reappeared, and when I reused them or made them part of new pieces, I was already considering what I had previously painted about them, as well as what had happened to them in other works. For example, Death has transformed from being a skeleton that might seem to bring bad news into a somewhat mocking or humorous figure wearing a party hat. We also find the Devil, the Magician, and the Red House, which serves as a refuge or a pilgrimage site where characters often end up—or could end up. Then there’s the Black Cat, which initially appeared simply as a warning symbol, as if telling the other characters to stay alert to what’s happening around them, but later became a kind of measure of time: in larger pieces, it typically appears three times. I enjoy playing with the ambiguity of whether it’s three different cats or the same cat appearing at three different points in the story. In this way, the characters help weave a narrative and create connections between all the pieces, forming a shared universe to which they all belong.

The Crow, the Stag, the Grapes, and the Wine I Spilled. 2024. Oil, spray paint, colored pencils, and oil pastels. 60 x 74 cm.

When did you transition to the garden series, and why?

In 2022, I decided to gather all the surreal scenes and sketches that were scattered around my studio and explore what would happen if they coexisted in the same space—what would happen if all these seemingly disconnected elements were placed on the same plane. In this case, the plane is the canvas, and the setting is the garden. It’s here that the garden, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and all the imagery rooted in our collective unconscious become visible. From that point, I chose to keep pulling the thread of this story to see where it would lead me. This is when all the characters begin to emerge, allowing me to create a space where I can play and find creative freedom that I hadn’t experienced in my previous work.

You Should Break My Heart in January 2024. Oil, spray paint, and colored pencils on canvas. 81 x 100 cm.

What connection does this phase of your work have with your past in the world of comics?

This phase of my work draws a lot from all the years I spent reading comics, from when I was a young child to trying to break into the American comic industry. I was close, so close, but it didn’t materialize. The truth is that, in the end, what interested me more than the drawing itself were the more experimental narratives, like those of John Hankiewicz, Dave McKean, or people of that kind. In that sense, I’m mainly influenced by the way stories are constructed. They are not sequential panels where A leads to B, and B leads to C. Rather, the visual journey through the pieces is like a comic page where you can jump from the first panel to the seventh and then return to the second, and depending on the order you choose, the story will unfold in one way or another. It’s true that, for example, what you often find are different fragments of the same scene: a beginning, a middle, a climax, and a resolution, but they are often surrounded by other scenes that either influence the events in each smaller scene or simply coexist in the same universe. In that sense, I’m also very interested in the idea of a shared universe, right? That all these pieces, this entire body of work, form part of a larger story that seems to want to tell itself, one that still doesn’t know where it’s going but is starting to find its place and path. Like the characters that started simply appearing and now each one has its own backstory.

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