Between March 5th and 8th, Madrid will host the first edition of the Contemporary Art Now Madrid, aka CAN Madrid art fair. This information may be slightly misleading, as CAN Madrid is a new name for the UVNT (formerly Urvanity) art fair, which has been running in the Spanish capital for a decade. Starring as a fair dedicated to the urban art of the mid-2010s, the fair evolved alongside its participants into the unibrow format we recognize and appreciate. And for their big anniversary, the team decided to change the name in line with their younger project, CAN Ibiza, whose 5th edition will take place on the island later this year, between June 25th and 28th.
In addition to becoming part of the Contemporary Art Now brand, the fair, which will be held again at the historic Matadero complex (the site of a former slaughterhouse), will present its largest and most international edition to date with almost 4,000 m² of exhibition space. Besides bringing together more than 50 national and international galleries from Tokyo to Milan, via New York, Santiago de Chile, and every corner of Spain, the fair is adding three new programs (CAN Design, Counterflow, and Solo/Duo Projects), as well as bringing back LATAM Focus and doubling its Young Galleries section.
Introduced in last year’s edition, Foco LATAM will present works by Latin American artists around the shared concept of New Surrealisms, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné. Saša Bogojev, curator of CAN Ibiza and regular contributor to The Unibrow, will collaborate for the first time with CAN Madrid as curator of the new Counterflow section, showcasing artists, mostly painters, who resist convention and carve out paths against the current. A new section, CAN Design, is devoted to collectible design works positioned between art and architecture, design, and craftsmanship. Curated by commentator and researcher Marisa Santamaría, it brings together leading names across these fields, including Belén Moneo, Alicia Framis, Andrés Jaque, and Gaspard Fleury-Dugy.
