The Autonomous Community of Madrid acquires 130,000 euros worth of art at the ARCO Fair

July 8, 2021. The Autonomous Community of Madrid has acquired 130,000 euros worth of art at ARCO – the Contemporary Art Fair. The Regional Government’s Councillor for Culture, Tourism and Sports, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, attended the inauguration of the event’s 40th edition, which was presided over by Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain.

The new purchase meets two objectives: expanding the collection of the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo - CA2M - and supporting the cultural sector in general, and contemporary art in particular. The pieces in question belong to the artists Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Ana Buenaventura and Cristina Iglesias.

This diverse and high-quality selection was determined by the Acquisitions Commission, consisting of: Gonzalo Cabrera, Director General of Cultural Promotion for the Autonomous Community of Madrid; Asunción Cardona Suanzes, Deputy Director General of Fine Arts for the Autonomous Community of Madrid; Manuel Segade, Director of the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo; Tania Pardo, Deputy Director of the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo and Plastic Arts Advisor, as well as the specialists Estrella de Diego and María Corral.

AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY OF MADRID’S ARCO PRIZE

Likewise, the Autonomous Community of Madrid’s ARCO Prize has been awarded to the artists Pablo Capitán Del Río for La Fuga Ebria (2021) from the Art Nueve Gallery in Murcia, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed for Mathematic casual (2021) from the NOME Gallery in Berlin.

Pablo Capitán Del Río (Granada, 1982) is an artist whose exploration of materials is clearly reflected in his sculptures, as he creates obsessive pieces whose fundamental characteristics include their tactile experience and the process itself. The acquired pieces speak about gaze and desire, through materials used to provide transparency, hollows or reflection.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (California, 1985) is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on intertextuality, literacy, the archive and ecology. Her installation functions as a radical self-editing method, where words interact with the architecture itself, which explores the experimental poetics of blackness, vernacular language and the concept of non-linearity as ways of thinking about the history of the black community.

The Prize jury was made up of Gonzalo Cabrera, Director General of Cultural Promotion for the Autonomous Community of Madrid; Asunción Cardona, Deputy Director General of Fine Arts for the Autonomous Community of Madrid; Manuel Segade, Director of the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo; Tania Pardo Pérez, Plastic Arts Advisor for the Regional Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Deputy Director of the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo; María Corral, art critic; and Agustín Pérez Rubio, independent curator.

This prize was created in 2004 to recognise the best visual art pieces by artists under the age of 40 that have been exhibited at the corresponding ARCO Fair edition. The acquired pieces then become part of the Contemporary Art Collection of the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, whose collection is further increased by awarding other art fair-related prizes.

On previous occasions, the Autonomous Community of Madrid’s ARCO Prize has acquired pieces by Asunción Molinos Gordo, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Cristina Garrido, Teresa Solar, Julia Spínola, David Bestué and Andrea Canepa.