Sin titulo (De la serie: Marrón Barroco), 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro
In early September, Madrid’s gallerists and collectors come back to life after a scorching summer lull. Apertura (September 10th to 13th), the city’s gallery weekend, marks the start of the new season as approximately 60 participants collectively launch their autumn shows.
Apertura opens during a time of transition for Madrid’s gallery scene. Long-standing players like Juana de Aizpuru, Helga de Alvear, and Marlborough recently closed, while a new generation including Río y Meñaka, Bowman Hal, Enhorabuena, and Gaby Vera Fine Arts have arrived.
Descending Soaring Infinite Bliss Soul Glyph - Mesmerizing Mesh #170, 2023
Haegue Yang
Prats Nogueras Blanchard
Mini Monumento del Heredero, 2026
Simon Vega
Albarrán Bourdais
“Madrid has been receiving new types of inhabitants, which has also made galleries grow,” says Pablo Flórez, president of the gallery association Arte Madrid and director of Galería Ehrhardt Flórez. Most significantly, Latin American collectors from countries like Venezuela and Mexico have brought “a high level of acquisition” and generated “a new kind of collecting.”
Madrid galleries have also confronted significant challenges: This year, many protested and took strike action over Spain’s 21 percent VAT on art sales (introduced under the conservative Partido Popular in 2012), which puts them at a disadvantage against counterparts in EU countries with lower art taxes. In a current political climate that Flórez describes as “polarized and tense,” Spanish gallerists may hope that whoever wins next year’s election will also offer additional support for the arts.
After all, galleries are critical to Madrid’s cultural growth. “Audiences have realized that galleries are no longer just places to buy art,” says Flórez, “but are part of the cultural fabric of the city.”
Here are the seven must-see shows of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend:
José Bedia
“Diálogos en el desierto”
El Apartamento
Through Oct.31
Havana-born José Bedia emerged among a revolutionary generation of Cuban artists whose 1981 exhibition “Volumen Uno” at the Centro de Arte Internacional de La Habana broke the mold by showing politically charged work. Since then, anthropological research has driven Bedia, whose practice involves fieldwork into artistic and spiritual traditions of Indigenous cultures in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. El Apartamento’s Madrid space is showing Bedia’s latest series, which explores the violence, mysticism, love, heritage, and nature which gallerist Luis Sicre says can be read as “representative” of Latin America.
Bedia is exhibiting over 30 paintings of mythic, richly colored landscapes with black silhouettes. Manifestación de Olokúm (2026) depicts a Yoruba deity of the ocean, while in Quema de Teocalis (2026), figures on horseback are dwarfed by giant Mesoamerican pyramids engulfed in flames. In Diálogos en el desierto (2026), a man and lion appear in dialogue.
Bedia created another series of paintings on blue cloth and jute from Mali, exemplifying the artist’s exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions: Aquella señal (2026) and Pide un deseo (2026) show mermaid-like beings emerging from water, while Toda esperanza (2026) depicts a human figure following a bird in flight.
Joël Andrianomearisoa
“I Have No Regret For The Past And This Is Not The End Of The World”
Sabrina Amrani
Through Nov. 7
Joël Andrianomearisoa, one of the leading artistic voices of Madagascar, explores language and the collective memories embedded in craft traditions. He represented his native island at the 2019 Venice Biennale and co-founded Hakanto Contemporary in Antananarivo, Madagascar, the following year.
This extensive survey traces three decades of the multidisciplinary artist’s practice, which earned him a place on this year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp shortlist (the award is for an artist working in France; Andrianomearisoa divides his time between there and Madagascar). The earliest, untitled pieces from 1996, as well as the most recent, are ink works on paper showing either the Latin-script alphabet or abstract patterns.
The color black pervades Andrianomearisoa’s work in all media. The wall piece La Guerre des Boutons I (2009) features black buttons sewn onto black fabric, After Time Desires (2017) comprises strips of torn black cloth, and the Labyrinth of Passions sculptures (2013)—inspired by Oscar Wilde’s 1902 prison letter De Profundis—is made of black silk paper and resembles pages of a book. Striking exceptions include Les Horizons Complexes (de l’Amour et d’une romance) II (2018), a wall piece made of dyed fabric that resembles a sunset. Gallerist Sabrina Amrani says a trip to India, where the artist viewed vibrant textiles, inspired him to work with color and to contemplate Madagascar’s complex historic links with South Asia.
Miguel Benlloch
“Todavía”
The Ryder
Through Oct. 31
The late Granada, Spain-born artist and activist Miguel Benlloch has earned late-breaking appreciation following a recent retrospective at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (CAAC) in Seville, Spain; his work questions the gender binary and other hegemonic social structures in a way that feels strikingly contemporary. From his involvement in the Andalusian Homosexual Liberation Front to his opposition to Spain’s NATO membership, Benlloch—who died in 2018—addressed the pressing issues of his time through performance, text-based work, and conceptual art.
The Ryder is displaying video and photography that captured some of Benlloch’s most striking performance pieces. They include Tengo Tiempo (1994), in which the artist sheds clothing to symbolically slip away from the precarious identities that culture inscribes on us, and DERERUMNATURA (2017), which links bodily illness with capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization.
Text-based works that further attest to Benlloch’s politically dissident voice. They include Canario (1993), a poem protesting the imminent U.S. invasion of Haiti (which took place the following year), and the pink-and-blue fabric flag Bandera Transexual (2010). Piedra Palestina (1993) is a silkscreen and wallpaper piece inspired by Palestine’s first Intifada (Uprising) against Israeli military occupation in 1987 to 1993.
Simón Vega
“Tiempos Cíclicos / Futuros Pasados”
Albarrán Bourdais
Through Oct. 17
Pre-Hispanic monoliths meet contemporary forms of power and propaganda in the work of Salvadoran artist Simón Vega. The artist uses junkyard debris in his new sculptures and installations, which reinterpret ancient monuments as they interrogate imperialism, corporate greed, digital surveillance, and other present-day phenomena in Central America.
Works like Estela del Gobernante S (2026) and Mini Monumento del Heredero (2026) consist of disused household and industrial materials—including kitchen utensils and fragments from washing and ventilation machines—piled into phallic structures that reimagine stelae from ancient Mayan civilizations. Zoomorfo (2026) is an immersive installation made of stacks of wooden pallets. Its structure is inspired by zoomorphs, massive granite sculptures found primarily in present-day Guatemala, which combine human and animal features. Another textile sculpture references the Mayan serpent deity Kukulkán with its long, fabric body and a head made of discarded rubber from shoes and slippers. The artist also draws from the ceremonial combat and ball games of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations with works like Altar Solar (2026) and Marcador de pelota (2026), through which he considers wider notions of spectacle, rivalry, and hierarchy.
Iman Issa
“A Game, or So You May Think”
carlier | gebauer
Through Nov. 14
Animal Masks for Tribunal Scene, 2022
Iman Issa
carlier | gebauer
Berlin-born carlier | gebauer, which has represented Iman Issa for over a decade, now presents the artist’s first Madrid show. It features key pieces from ongoing bodies of work that manipulate viewers’ relationship to history and meaning.
Self Portrait (Self as Hannah Arendt) (2020) and Self Portrait (Self as Georges Henein) (2021) are wall-mounted sculptures that resemble faceless heads. Their titles and wall texts (which form part of the artwork) blur the artist’s own identity with those of historical figures. These clinical-looking, white oblongs contrast with the bold colors of Animal Masks for Tribunal Scene (2022), an installation of 3D-printed masks that might evoke various beasts with their suggestions of horns and ears but are otherwise abstract and minimalistic.
Other works are inspired by historical artifacts. Heritage Studies #49 (2025), for example, is a long, pointed copper pin on a slanting white plinth, which the artist made for a solo show that ran at Lenbachhaus in Munich until April. The accompanying text for Heritage Studies #46 (2023)—which appeared in Issa’s Art Institute of Chicago exhibition last year—says the lacquered aluminum structure is inspired by a shrine in the Palestinian village of Deir Ghassaneh.
Agnieszka Kurant, Hito Steyerl, Haegue Yang
“Feral Agency”
Prats Nogueras Blanchard
Through Nov. 14
Nonorganic Life 6, 2025
Agnieszka Kurant
Prats Nogueras Blanchard
A new group show in Prats Nogueras Blanchard’s Madrid space explores how humans’ sense of agency is subject to wider systems of knowledge and control. German filmmaker Hito Steyerl explores how digital environments impact our future; her video installation Power Plants (2019)—originally created for a 2019 solo exhibition at London’s Serpentine Galleries—features images of flora generated by an AI model often used to forecast future trends and behavior. New York–based Agnieszka Kurant, who often collaborates with scientists to produce speculative works about non-human intelligence, presents her recent piece Unthoughtforms (2026), a crystalline sculpture crafted by passing electric currents and sound waves through copper sulfate solution. Also on view is her colorful painting Nonorganic Life 6 (2025), made of metal salt crystals on aluminum plates. Haegue Yang, living between Seoul and Berlin, imbues industrially manufactured objects with sensory life: Her futuristic, wood-and-stainless-steel chandelier Mesmerizing Pagoda Lantern - Carbonous Convulsion Ultramundane Flowers (2024) is animated by an arrangement of flowers made of hanji paper, a frequent material in Korean Buddhist rituals.
La Chola Poblete
“Marrón Barroco”
Travesía Cuatro
Through Nov. 7
Sin título, 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro
Sin título, 2026
La Chola Poblete
Travesia Cuatro
La Chola Poblete, who received special mention from the Venice Biennale’s awards jury in 2024, is known for vivid paintings, photographs, and drawings. Her work critiques contemporary culture, identity, and political discourse through a queer, decolonial lens. The trans Argentine artist often deliberately overcrowds her compositions, which feature busy arrangements of Andean iconography and pop culture references.
Poblete’s latest paintings partly draw from the Latin American baroque, in which European colonial aesthetics blended with Indigenous and African traditions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Figures with braided hair also often appear in Poblete’s work to denounce the stereotyping and exoticization of Indigenous people: one such figure lies naked in Sin título (2026) surrounded by Che Guevara’s face, the Palestinian flag, and the Grindr logo, among other faces, figures, and patterns. Two new, untitled paintings depict a pair of collage-like figures in confrontation: one is a spectral, gender-ambiguous creature while the other is part of Poblete’s ongoing study of “cholas” (women of mixed European and Indigenous heritage). The gallery show coincides with Poblete’s exhibition at Madrid’s La Casa Encendida, “Continentes como semillas,” which she shares with flamenco artist Niño de Elche and Pedro G. Romero to explore ideas of appropriation and erasure across continents.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/XNQHJ21
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