The most important Art Week in Spain is approaching. From March 4th to 10th, Madrid is filled with art lovers: collectors, artists, gallery owners... They bring the city to life by attending fairs, museums, and events that take place during the week.
This year, LAB 36 is part of this great artistic buzz by participating in UVNT - International Fair of New Contemporary Art. We are very excited to participate and expand the art created in Barcelona to other places. On the walls of our small booth, we present three local artists who reflect current artistic trends. Each one, from their personal perspective, illustrates the way we relate to the environment and, especially, to the contemporary city.
Oscar Abraham Pabón
Plaza Callao for the UVNT Public Art Program
Artist and architect Oscar Abraham Pabón develops a body of work focused on the urban and aesthetic research of the city. His practice combines his interest in sculpture, painting, philosophy, and public space.
For the Public Art Program located in Plaza Callao, he presents "Composition in Line #1". It is a circle made of recycled brick fragments. The work raises the constructive materiality of the city in relation to the history of geometric abstract art and how the city, through its constructive materiality, provides tools and resources to think about art and the contemporary city.
Some of the brick fragments were rescued from the intervention "Psychoarchitecture" at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, a temporary site-specific project presented at the Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2023 and SWAB Barcelona 2023.
The Public Art Program by @uvnt_art is sponsored by @lexusspain in collaboration with the Madrid City Council through the @todoestaenmadrid program.
Honest Matters
Returning to the thread of his artistic intervention at Plaza Callao, Pabón addresses in "Honest Material" the constructive materiality of the city as an aesthetic and conceptual problem in the contemporary city, a tradition inherited from the history of architecture and urbanism seen from today.
Taking clay brick as a poor and sincere material, a body of work is developed that establishes relationships with art, the city, and memory. The idea of white as a search for purity, both physical and spiritual, contrasts with the red of terracotta.
With this background, the white walls of the gallery become part of the history that aims to show what these walls hide. The brick becomes the guiding thread where the problems and concerns of art and architecture meet: ornamentation, decoration, emptiness, the rational and the baroque enter into a constant dialogue and tension.
Miguel Ángel Madrigal
The Spaces of Barcelona
At our booth, we present the works from the exhibition "The Spaces of Barcelona" by Miguel Ángel Madrigal, which were exhibited at the Barcelona Gallery Weekend 2022. On this occasion, Madrigal materializes his gaze, constructed from a sensory perception of spaces, into three-dimensional works.
Through an elegant sculptural language, the artist explores the multiple possibilities of dialogue between volumes and forms - sources of inspiration for him - to reflect on the relationship between bodies and environments. The project is inspired by the most representative buildings of Barcelona and arose from the need to walk through the city and abstract oneself from the sensations and emotions generated by walking its streets.
The Distance That Separates
In addition to the relationship with the city, Miguel Ángel Madrigal speculates about the thin border that separates nature from culture, the eternal from the finite. A border that can be abruptly transgressed at any moment: an accident, a weather catastrophe, a sudden death.
The sculptures challenge gravity in a play between balance and tension sustained at the moment where anything can happen. From the absurd, it questions the acts of everyday life, drawing a faint line between the lived and the unlived, the already experienced and the expectations. Madrigal constructs the moment "before" where the fracture is imminent, where the improbable becomes real.
Madison Tyrell
Losing Touch
Madison moved to Barcelona in 2021, where she currently lives and works. The landscapes and colors of the Mediterranean have significantly influenced her, achieving a new stage in her artistic evolution. This evolution can be appreciated in "Losing Touch", the series of works we present at UVNT.
The exhibited work aims to capture the interaction between self-disintegration found in the transformative power of nature, serving as testimony to the profound connection between human existence and the natural environment.
Tyrell uses natural elements to express these emotions, evoking a sense of transcendence and introspection. The encountered environments can confront and challenge familiar emotions, establishing a contrast between personal aspirations and the anticipated comfort found in the refuge of nature. She delves into the realm of self-discovery, intertwining human essence with the ethereal voice of the surrounding landscapes.
