Open a gallery in Madrid in pandemic times

Intersticio, Arniches 26 and Photo España Gallery launch new spaces in Madrid, despite the current situation. They join brands like Furiosa, Ultravioleta or Corner gallery, just a few months old, going through the pandemic.

“We are an irreverent and rebellious gallery that has generated a roster of about ten Spanish artists with whom we like to work as if we were a team.” This is what Furiosa’s owner looks like.

The girls from Intersticio, Cristina Herraiz, Ana Coronel de Palma and Sol Abaurrea, have also ‘jumped into the abyss’ in these complicated moments, not at all newcomers, given their experience in the artistic field, after their time in galleries such as Marta Cervera or Albarrán Bourdais or auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s. “The question is not so much why open during a pandemic, but why not do it – Abaurrea responds on behalf of the three – now that you cannot travel, that people are bored, anything that is proposed is very celebrated.” In his case, a gallery in the Lista neighborhood (C/ Alcántara, 31), which opened its doors last weekend to great reception.

They did it with the collective ‘Claro del Bosque’, with creators such as Nora Aurrekoetxea Lucía Bayón, Isabella Benshimol, Julia Creuheras or Diego Delas· to a certain extent, a declaration of intentions of what this new space has proposed: an abstraction in the middle of everything or what is happening, an area where the mystical, the game, the magic prevail and that invites us to advance from the shadows. “We are clear that we want to consolidate ourselves as a gallery but we will define what we are with the steps we take,” explains the person in charge. Ours is a large space (200 square meters divided into two floors of what was a glove factory in its last stage, a complete one hundred) that gives rise to the most varied collaborations.

Interstice could be understood far from the art centers in the capital, but it is even more so from the mother house, in London, the city where it was born by Herraiz and which now remains closed due to the measures against the pandemic developed in the United Kingdom. United. The comparisons, then, with The Ryder – which also began marching in the British capital to promote Spanish art and the ’emergency’, and which has just completed one year in Madrid – are logical. «We address everyone, right now, without any elitism; to the people of the neighborhood, who stop when they come or go shopping. But we are pursuing that young collector, much more settled in Great Britain, interested in art but who has not yet dared to buy and who is clear that what he wants is not an Ikea print, but rather an original work.