19 – 21 febbraio 2010, Madrid
comunicato stampa
ARCOmadrid_ 2010 will be opening its doors very soon. Many collectors, critics, curators and other agents will be arriving from all over the world for this must-visit event for the contemporary art, annually attended by tens of thousands of visitors. From February 17th through 21st, Madrid becomes the capital for happening art, with a programme covering the latest international tendencies with works from around three thousand artists brought by over 200 galleries.
With Los Angeles as this year’s special guest, Madrid will be showcasing a cross-section of art from one of the world’s foremost centres, a city setting the guidelines for contemporary art. With a selection of 17 major galleries, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, the art fair gives visitors a perfect chance to acquaint themselves with the art scene from one of the USA’s major centres for production.
Besides, the exhibiting galleries guarantee a complete spectrum of languages, supports and expressions. The fair’s General Programme, with its ARCO40 subsection, covers everything from the grand masters of the 20th century to the more recent art both from here in Spain and internationally. Rounding off this core programme are the curated sections Solo Projects, Expanded Box, CinemaLoop and Performing ARCO, demonstrating ARCOmadrid’s focus on more groundbreaking projects. Coming from around 30 countries worldwide, these projects reinforce the fair’s range and its reputation as a showcase for the most cutting-edge contemporary creation.
With L.A. as the fair’s guest city, ARCOmadrid_ 2010 is a good opportunity to discover this city’s leading galleries and to exchange impressions and opinions with collectors and directors of museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) or the Hammer Museum, who are visiting the fair. February looks like being an exciting month with lots of artists in the city, including Raymond Pettibon who, courtesy of the Regen Projects gallery from L.A., has designed the t-shirt MANGO has produced for the costumes of the fair staff, and which will be on sale at the fair with profits going to the Menudos Corazones Foundation.
Madrid becomes one big art gallery
Similarly to other editions, art centres, museums and other venues in Madrid have programmed acts and exhibitions to coincide with ARCOmadrid. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía has a show by the artist Mario García Torres; Matadero Madrid has organised performances by My Barbarian and a wonderful installation by DOUG AIKTEN; Canal de Isabel is opening a photography exhibition by Julius Shulman on architecture in Los Angeles. These are just a few examples of what to expect in Madrid this February.
At the same time, there is also room for dialogue and debate at the fair thanks to the 8th Experts Forum, with the participation of around art experts from around the world.
With this wide-ranging programme ARCOmadrid_ 2010 gets the international calendar of art fairs off to a kickstart with more than 5,000 VIP guests and 3,000 journalists from all over the globe, together with artists, intellectuals, museum directors and other players in the art world.
Beyond all doubt, it’s an event nobody will want to miss, an event where we can check the pulse of the market, enjoy the wonderful works on show and discover where contemporary creation is heading.
LOS ANGELES, GUEST CITY AT ARCOmadrid_ 2010
Seventeen galleries and an exciting exhibition program give the Spanish public an overview of the diversity and wealth of art from this major US city
Galleries, collectors and other contemporary art players will be travelling from all over the world to Madrid, the capital of Spain, for ARCOmadrid_ 2010, the International Contemporary Art Fair, from February 17th through 21st. Given its growing influence, this annual fair is one of the world’s major art market events and turns Madrid into an exciting world capital for contemporary art.
The most noteworthy new introduction at the upcoming edition of the art fair is the focus on Los Angeles, one of the world’s epicentres for art right now, as the fair’s special invited guest. In its PANORAMA program ARCOmadrid_ 2010 is inviting a city, instead of a country as was the case before, and L.A. was chosen for the dynamic creative diversity that has earned it a place at the top of the art market ranking. This is the beginning of a number of editions of the fair that will bring to Madrid the very best of what’s happening in contemporary art worldwide, focusing not only on countries as it has done up until now, but also on major regions or urban centres in a globalised world that is increasingly more diverse and plural, overstepping national boundaries.
With a selection of 17 galleries, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, the visiting public will be given an overview in the Panorama: Los Angeles of a sample of artists and galleries demonstrating “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.
Visitors to the art fair 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. In fact Christopher Grimes has been a regular at ARCOmadrid over the last few years.
Los Angeles takes over the street of Madrid
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 add to the vision of LA offered by art galleries. 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.
ARCOmadrid_ 2010, a big event for the art market
Together with Panorama: Los Angeles, around two hundred galleries and almost three thousand top drawer artists will make the fair a good mirror of the latest tendencies in contemporary art. The work on view will undoubtedly reflect the existing plethora of languages, supports and expression, ranging from painting to performance, not forgetting sculpture, installation, digital art and more emerging creative expressions.
Without abandoning the moderate and measured approach it adopted last year, ARCOmadrid_ 2010 will give collectors and other players a chance to discover the best new art from Spain and worldwide. Together with the galleries exhibiting in the core General Programme, the art fair also lends a spotlight to groundbreaking art in its various programmes: Solo Projects, Expanded-Box, CINEMALoop and Performing ARCO. These curated sections feature projects coming from around thirty different countries, while also reinforcing the fair as a showcase for the best and most cutting-edge contemporary art.
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 art publications, especially contemporary art, as part of Art Publishers and Magazines.
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 on interest. The city of Los Angeles will also feature strongly in these panels, with “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 the participation of Jorge Pardo, a Cuban-American artist resident in Los Angeles, in “Conversations With Artists”.
An extensive cultural programme rounds off ARCOmadrid_ 2010, the International Contemporary Art Fair, making it a must visit event for anyone seriously interested in discovering the latest in contemporary art.
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INFORMAZIONI UTILI:
ARCO
Madrid
Feria de Madrid
IFEMA. Halls 6, 8 y 10
giornate aperte solo agli operatori (ad invito): mercoledì 17 giovedì 18 from noon to 8 p.m.
pubblico: Friday 19th, Saturday 20th and Sunday 21th from noon to 8 p.m.
