2024-03-08 14:48:27
The contrast between the representative building of the Prado Museum, in front of which people enjoy the March sun, the fantastically playful Art Deco townhouses, the wide Retiro Park through which joggers move in columns and the gray, monstrously large exhibition halls of the traditional Spanish trade fair Arco on the outskirts couldn’t be bigger.
And then there is a tank, strange, brutal. Next to them is a group of schoolgirls, excited and jittery. Soldiers in uniform rush past. One comes and takes the bag from a girl, accompanies her to the war vehicle and helps her climb up. A boy sits in the cockpit of a fighter plane and beams as the buttons are explained to him.
However, this is not a performance. This year, parallel to Arco Madrid, a career entry fair, the “Semana de la Educación”, is taking place on the huge grounds of the Ifema trade fair company. Hundreds of young people mingle with the art crowd to find out what they can do with their lives. Is there an artist to choose from alongside the soldier?
Arco art fair: Latin America in focus
In any case, a completely different picture emerges inside the Arco. Once you have made it through the security checks, the gray surroundings are forgotten: the halls are filled with noise, as if Europe’s art scene had met after a strict lockdown to have a long chat. There is an excitement as if there was nothing more important than this opening. The collector audience, however, is more like 60 plus. There is little to be found about future issues facing young people.
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As every year, Arco focuses on Latin America and this time the Caribbean. Colonial history is dealt with very discreetly, the topic of climate change comes up every now and then, then there is a focus on homosexuality, mostly between men, and trans identity plays a role at the Crisis Gallery from Peru.
Otherwise, collectors are not given cause to worry or be overwhelmed – on the contrary, the mixture seems almost reserved, serious, then dreamy, even melancholic. The symbol: A simply beautiful owl by Kiki Smith flies by, “Evening Star” from 2023 by Lelong from Paris.
Neon is popular
Jeppe Hein’s calming “I am the light in you” neon tube lettering from 2020 by Nicolai Wallner from Copenhagen is also symptomatic of the program. Neon light is a popular medium at trade fairs, unlike video or large installations, which are rarely found at Arco.
Better fluorescent for the wall: Gisela Capitain has Andrea Bowers throw Martin Luther King’s quote “Beloved Community” on the wall in neon. John Armleder doesn’t send a message to Mehdi Chouakri, but a neon “blast” from 2022; The flame, which flickers decoratively in two directions, costs 50,000 euros.
Neon artwork by Alfredo Jaar at Thomas Schulte
Quelle: Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Chouakri from Berlin and Capitain from Cologne are among a large number of galleries from Germany whose presence and quality are striking, also because many of the important, established, now – lovingly meant – “long-established galleries” are those who already have their business 20, 30, 40 years or longer.
Max Hetzler (founded in 1974) from Berlin, Vera Munro from Hamburg (1977) and the next generation with Bärbel Grässlin (1985), Gisela Capitain from Cologne (1986), Esther Schipper (1989), Contemporary Fine Arts (1992), Neugerriemschneider ( 1994) and Mehdi Chouakri (1996). Many of the galleries of the late 90s had to close around the economic crisis of 2008. At the Arco in Madrid you can now experience the unbroken international strength of these galleries – their art penetrates the labyrinth of booths like a spider’s web.
Vera Munro, for example, shows Anne Laure Sacriste, a young artist who likes to dissect Old Masters in detail and magically translates individual motifs and their “gravity” into her art (“Gravity Sculpture”, 21,000 euros). Neugerriemschneider competes with his resident artists Thomás Saraceno, Ólafur Elíasson, Ai Weiwei and Noa Eshkol.
Billy Childish, „as it was“, 2023
Source: © Billy Childish/Courtesy the artist and neugirriemschneider, Berlin/Photo Jens Ziehe
But Billy Childish hits the tone of the fair with his painting “As It Was” from 2023: A silhouette in a canoe in front of a natural landscape – was there really anything better? Or maybe worse? And Meyer Riegger from Karlsruhe and Berlin also invites you to linger: In front of the bunk there is a bench from which you can quietly enjoy Ulla von Brandenburg’s “Raise Up Valley, Sink Down Mountain”, a two by 1.4 meter quilt , which holds the eye and carries it away into the clear world of colors.
Berlin Gallery in Madrid
Carlier Gebauer, founded in Berlin in 1991, is one of the galleries from Germany. In 2019 they opened a branch in Madrid – with success. This is not a given; Their art is of particular finesse; they represent quiet, penetrating voices and do not offer monumental paintings for the loft collector.
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Michel François, for example, appears thoughtful with his duo of a faceless bronze ball in a black hooded sweater and next to it a black-and-white photograph of a man with his head buried in his hands (35,000 euros). A few steps further, the floor opens up and you look as if into the underworld – the photo “Oratorio” by Lúcia Koch from 2013 creates the illusion of a deep, endless shaft (40,000 euros). The Spanish painter Louis Gordillo painted “Cilindración de fluidos” in 1990, which now costs 165,000 euros.
View of the exhibition hall at Arco Madrid 2024
Quelle: ARCOmadrid
However, six-figure amounts remain the exception in Madrid; prices usually range between 10,000 and 100,000 euros. Like “Solar Power” from 2023, an enamel sun by Oscar Tuazon at Chantal Crousel. Thaddaeus Ropac has Miquel Barceló’s comparatively small 2016 painting Larga Cambiada, which might as well be a rising sun.
And Daniel Richter makes fun of “moral practical jokes” with a cryptic figure image on a red background (2023). The favorite of the visitors are the humorous and cynical sculptors Elmgreen & Dragset with their young tennis player from 2020, who is lying on the green grass, somewhat eerily exhausted, throwing his racket and ball (Helga de Alvear, Madrid).
The future of youth
In the case of Thomas Schulte from Berlin, what concerns us all shines through in the end: Alfredo Jaar’s “(Kindness) of (Strangers)” from 2015 hangs there. In the year of the great refugee movement, the artist traced the routes on a map, now they flicker in front of you to the eye as an abstract play of lines made of neon tubes. On the map you can see that at that time there was only a yawning emptiness over Russia and Ukraine. Today, nine years later, that gap has tragically been closed.
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And even at Contemporary Fine Arts, the viewer begins to think about the future of youth – in front of Christa Dichgans’ intensive, large-format painting: It shows a box with children’s toys, wildly mixed up, at the very top lies a bear with wide-eyed eyes; it looks like it’s being held by a gloved hand.
Even if the galleries’ first-class works are not on display in Madrid, Arco is aware of its position on the periphery of the European art market, which is dominated by Art Basel, which has a monopoly position in Paris and Basel. The tour still shows how important the fair is for galleries, especially from Germany. And so in the end, between all this art from thousands of artists from more than thirty countries, there is a lot of hope that maybe everything will turn out well after all – for the generations of the future.
Madrid Archuntil March 10, 2024
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