SWAB BARCELONA PRESENTS ITS FULL PROGRAM
SWAB presents a full program featuring 300 consecrated and emerging artists from over 60 international galleries.
The 11th edition of Swab Barcelona Art Fair will take place from the 27th to the 30th of september, consolidated as one of the leading independent art fairs of the international context.
The Desert and the Cactus
Swab Barcelona presents The Desert and the Cactus featuring six prestigious New York galleries that will take us on a tour around Brooklyn’s new painting scene. On show there will be works by American artists expressing a growing interest in preserving nature and in ritualistic ways to return to the basics and be in contact with nature. The cactus symbolizes the adaptation to the most extreme conditions. The Desert and the Cactus is curated by Omar López-Chaoud, one of the most respected names in contemporary art.
Exhibitors: Deli Gallery, NY // False Flag, NY // Dutton, NY // Rawson Projects, NY // 321 Gallery, NY // American Medium, NY
Leah Beeferman, Rawson Projects
Swab Performance
Swab Barcelona presents the fourth edition of the Swab Performance program, organized in collaboration with the Diputació de Barcelona's Visual Arts Program.
An expert committee formed by Alexandra Laudo, Joan Morey and Imma Prieto have chosen the following six artists to present a performance within the context of the fair: Ariadna Guiteras, Bartomeu Sastre, El Palomar, Julia Mariscal, Victoria Macarte, and Lolo & Sosaku.
Swab Performance aims to support artistic performative practices from artists living in or related to Catalonia, aswell as to contribute to their visibility.
The jury is formed by Imma Prieto (Barcelona), art critic, independent curator and professor of Contemporary Art and New Media at the EU-Eram University of Gerona. Inma also writes for different magazines and has directed the documentary Eco de Primera Muerte (GAC Award for Art Criticism 2018). Joan Morey (Sant Llorenç Des Cardassar, Majorca) is an artist whose work focuses on the artistic representation of new devices of power through performance. In 2017, he won the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona de Artes Visuales. Alexandra Laudo (Barcelona) is an independent curator and art critic, as well as the founder of Heroínas de la Cultura, devoted to developing and curating different artistic projects. Between 2017 and 2018, she curated the cycle The possibility of an island at Espai 13 in Fundació Joan Miró, as well as the exhibition Una Certa Foscor at Caixa Fòrum.
Ephemeral
The Ephemeral program aims to interact with visitors. Supported by Icub, it has created the Softbodies exhibition. Curator Caterina Almirall will select interactive installation projects reflecting on our place in a globalized and fast-paced system through issues such as sustainability and the near future. Ephemeral will also show projects from Barcelona’s three art factories—La Escocesa, Fabra i Coats and El Hangar. This program aims to create a circuit of international collectors and to enlarge Barcelona’s creative fabric.
On Paper
Curated by Carolina Diez-Cascón, On Paper seeks to uncover the possibilities offered by the contemporary use of paper as an artistic language, as well as a conceptualization transcending its nature as a support.
Exhibitors: Ángeles Baños (Badajoz), Anne-Laure Girard (France), Galería Nordés (Santiago de Compostela) Ibirapi (Lisbon), La Carbonería (Huesca), Set Espai d'Art ( Valencia), 55-SP (Sao Paulo).
Ruth Moran, Galeria Ángeles Baños.
Reading
Este año Swab también inaugura Reading, un programa con el que se pretende mostrar su interés por todas las disciplinas con una concept store editorial donde encontrar distintas formas de arte mediante libros. Esta edición contará con a/b Books, una propuesta editorial sueca que armoniza lo rural con lo urbano, naturaleza con ciudad. Ambos polos son motivos recurrentes en las publicaciones de a/b Books, que combinan texto, fotografía y collage. La segunda, Paranoia Publishig, nació en Estonia pero tiene sedes en varios puntos del globo. La casa apuesta por crear al margen de las convenciones, tiene como meta ‘la destrucción de la realidad’ y se autodenomina como el producto más anormal del mercado del arte contemporáneo. Así pues, el grupo editorial reformula el significado del libro para convertirlo en concepto en sí mismo, en contenido, en idea.
General Program
The General Program features the following prestigious galleries representing consecrated artists: Angels Barcelona (Barcelona, Lua Coderch y Joan Fonrcuberta), ADN (Barcelona, Pep Vidal), Rafael Pérez Hernando (Madrid, Regine Schumann), The Drawing Room (Philippines), Rocío Santa Cruz (Barcelona, Mar Arza), Heinrich Ehrhardt (Madrid, Guillermo Pfaff), Rafeal Ortiz (Sevilla, Dalila Gonçalves), ADDAYA (Palma de Majorca), Ana Mas Projects (Barcelona), Espacio Pla (Buenos Aires), Espacio Valverde (Madrid), Espai Tactel (Valencia, Fito Conesa)), Espositivo (Madrid), Fuori Campo (Siena), Galerie Iragui (Moscow), Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Berlin), Galería Alegría (Madrid), Galería Breve (Mexico City), Galería Tokio (Lima), Goldberg Galerie (Munich), Granada Gallery (Buenos Aires), Jacob Bjorn (Aarhus), JPS (Hong Kong), Last Resort (Copenhagen), MAAB Gallery (Milano), Pabellon 4 (Buenos Aires), Pantocrator Gallery (Szhou), Ribot Gallery (Milan), Rincon Projects (Bogotá), SGR (Bogotá), The Gallery Apart (Rome), Víctor Lope (Barcelona), 3 Punts (Barcelona).
Terrain Vague, The Switch (Swab Seed)
Swab Seed
For the fourth consecutive year, Swab Barcelona hosts a selection of independent spaces devoted to art creation and exhibition with experimentation as a common denominator. It is increasingly common for new creatives to be organized in independent spaces, artist collectives, pop up galleries and online galleries. These alternative models focus on contemporary issues such as globalization and digitalization and meet the needs that traditional art spaces don’t cover. The aim of this program is to give visibility to this type of young platforms that are shaking the contemporary art scene.
Participating galleries: Mutt Collective -New York, USA // Satélite -Ciudad de Querétaro, Mexico // Square Projects -London, UK // 101 Estudio – Bogotá, Colombia // The Switch -Lisbon, Portugal // Arcade + One's Room -Okinawa, Japan // CAMPUR RASA -Bali, Indonesia // Nottwins – Barcelona
Nickolai Zhuk, High Gallery
My First Art Fair (MFAF)
Every year, Swab hosts a selection of three contemporary art galleries less than two years old representing artists born in 1975 onwards which have not yet participated in any international fair. The fair offers this space for free with the aim of promoting young galleries and giving visibility to emerging artists. Portugal, Germany and Poland are the guest countries in this edition.
Participating galleries: Las Palmas – Lisbon // Storage Capacité – Germany // High Gallery – Poland
Swab and Gastronomy
Swab supports products made in Barcelona ??for their quality and creativity. Again this year, there will be a gastronomic area highlighting exquisitely executed products, from the innovative Tibidabo Brewing beers to classics like the legendary Flash Flash restaurant, founded by photographer Leopoldo Pomés. Barcelona’s gastronomy is synonymous with innovation and art and the tradition of Cavas Ferret, and that is why Swab wants to devote a space to it by collaborating with elBulli Foundation, an alliance that seeks to create new projects and promote unlimited art.
Swab Awards
As every year, Swab will also give a series of awards with the support of several organisations, including Banco Sabadell Foundation Award for the best gallery, the DKV Award for Best Spanish Artist, the MANGO Award for Best Emerging Artist, the Grisart Photography Award, the Marset Idea Art Award, the Diezy7 Collection Drawing Award, and the Best Catalan Artist by Fundació Lluís Coromina, with Bonart magazine's support.