The Arco Madrid fair will hold an edition for the first time in the month of March, with an exhibition in which decolonization will play a leading role, as the director, Maribel López, has announced, and in which, for the first time, The legendary gallery owner Juana de Aizpuru will not be present. The great art event is going to be from the 6th to the 10th at the Ifema fairgrounds.
Regarding the dates, López, who already confirmed that they would be maintained in the future because this first experience has “shown that it makes sense”, the reasons are both to gain time for assembly and to avoid days that coincide with what is known as ‘week ‘white’, which made the presence of gallery owners and collectors difficult.
In an interview with Europa Press, the director of the fair clarified that behind this dance of dates is not the avoidance of competition from other significant contemporary art meetings on the calendar. In fact, this movement relates Arco to another ‘giant’ such as Tefaf in Maastricht.
This will be the first edition of Arco that will not have one of its founders, the gallerist Juana de Aizpuru, who has announced her retirement. The director of the fair admits that it will be a “special” edition, with a prepared tribute of which she does not reveal details, and that the organization also has “very nice ideas so that it no longer disappears from the history of Arco.”
“Obviously I am very sad that she is not there, because I have grown up with her and I have learned so much from her…”, he noted, highlighting her pioneering role, which will be “much missed.” Furthermore, she has recognized that it is “a change” for a fair that “does not stop and always has a look at the present and the future.”
On this occasion, there will be a total of 205 galleries from 36 countries: 73 Spanish galleries and 132 foreign ones. “We want to continue growing,” acknowledged the director of the fair, who in addition to highlighting the international projection pointed out the large number of galleries that had been left out this year.
“Approximately the same as those that have entered, close to 200,” López explained two weeks ago during the presentation of the fair. Precisely, last Tuesday the artist Manolo Valdés, visiting Madrid for his first individual exhibition in the city after a decade, criticized Arco in an interview – which he considers has an obsolete gallery selection criterion – and denounced that its own gallery, Open Gallery, had been “banned” from this edition.
López has rejected these accusations, although he says he “understands that he is upset” by his non-presence in this edition. “I understand that you are upset, but I feel bad that you insult the fair and the galleries. It is very difficult to select the projects and, in your case, you have not obtained the necessary votes, but it is not a veto,” he indicated in the comments. days prior to the meeting.
Likewise, he has defended the selection criteria that are repeated every year, with “super strict” rules and a “very serious” work procedure for the galleries. In this sense, he recalled that it is the galleries themselves that choose other galleries – “a common criterion” in other fields – and that a representativeness of international galleries and others “in local contexts” is achieved.
For the curator, it is a procedure “done with great respect, care and seriousness”, which also has an appeal committee in case the galleries are not happy with the result. “Everything is very reviewed, really,” she indicated.
Arco will have more than 350 invited collectors this year, in addition to another 200 professionals for meetings. And it will also seek to protect the Spanish artist, just as forecasts point to a number of visitors similar to that of the previous edition.
National representation this year stands at 35% of the offering and the international segment rises to 65%, while nearly 30% is accounted for by the Latin American presence, with the participation of 38 galleries from 13 countries, with a special presence of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
In addition, it incorporates as a 2024 research topic ‘The shore, the tide, the current: an oceanic Caribbean’, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates and Sara Hermann Morera and where 19 galleries will participate. Added to this section is ‘Opening. New Galleries’, with fifteen galleries, and ‘Never the Same. Latin American Art’, with twelve other galleries.
López has already announced that decolonization will be one of the topics present in the next edition. It is not really a topic that as director of the fair I should attack, “I think it is the artists who have been thinking about it for a long time from a historical and critical tradition and it will be present in Arco because it is a very current discourse,” said López, who has not revealed specific pieces in this regard but does point to this new section of Latin American art as a meeting point.
Another novelty this year will be the entry of works related to Artificial Intelligence – “now I don’t know what works there are, but I’m sure it’s behind some pieces,” said López. The director of Arco has been in favor of the introduction of this new technique, which she considers “just another tool.”
The change of dates for March will also make Arco coincide with 8-M. López has announced that there will be a space that day for the Association of Women in the Visual Arts and has indicated that the presence of women at the fair has grown from 37% to 43%, although she does not contemplate recovering proposals like the one from two years ago. of a specific space for artists. “It’s true that it was removed and raised some controversy, but I don’t think recovering it is an option,” she admitted.
