Contemporary Art Fair

ARCO

ARCO begins a new phase, with a project combining continuity with the necessary innovation to face the demands of the contemporary art scene. A project inheriting an excellent reputation, and an enviable starting point from which to take on the new challenges opposed by the art market, and to responds to issues like the growth of collecting in Spain, the consolidation of ARCO as a marketplace, and the increasing competitiveness of international art fairs.

ARCO is opening a new phase, and this upcoming edition will see the first signs of the new guidelines for the future. That said, it will be 2008 when we see a real change, coinciding with a change of location to the brand new exhibition halls (12 and 14) at Feria Madrid, which will serve as a new starting point to redesign the layout and set new actions in motion.

Keys to the New ARCO Project.

In this new phase, ARCO will focus on three priority areas. First of all, its internationalization, with an action plan targeting Latin America and the emerging Asian market. In this context, the guest countries Korea (2007) and Brazil (2008) will undoubtedly help to open up access to Asia and to boost ARCOs reputation as the gateway for Latin American art to the European market.

The second goal is to reinforce ARCO as a generating and dynamising element in the art market, devoting special attention to private Spanish and international collecting, as well as to institutional and corporate collections.

And thirdly, something much more visible in this edition, is the articulation of the artistic contents of the fair. And though it will embrace the whole spectrum of creative tendencies, these will now be organised in three sections. Firstly, the General Programme, with the fairs official selection of galleries; secondly, Projects will host all the artistic alternatives selected by independent curators, and finally, The Black Box will maintain its format specialising in audiovisuals and new technologies.

The Fair.

Like other years, the General Programme is the core of the art fair, with a top quality selection of galleries, a comprehensive representation of art and artists, with a strong emphasis on the Historical Avant-gardes, and many big names from the international gallery world ranging from Modern Art to cutting-edge contemporary creation. Particularly worth underscoring is the wide representation from Austria, the guest country last year, together with a significant number of galleries from Germany, Portugal, Latin America and Asia.

Korea will play a central role this year as the focus country, with a project devised by Jung-Wha Kim, director of Museums Korea in Seoul, in collaboration with Jeong Ah Shin, chief curator of the Sungkok Art Museum and lecturer at the Dongguk University, who is in charge of the selection of galleries and artists projects in this section. The Korean presence will be rounded off by several exhibitions in museums and art centres in Madrid.

In turn, the sections set aside for emerging art will, as usual, be curated by leading independent curators, although we are introducing a significant new feature as far as the structure is concerned. More experimental creation will be showcased in one single programme called PROJECTS, which will no longer use thematic or conceptual leitmotifs for selecting galleries and artists, with a shift towards a more global presentation of contemporary creation. The team of curators comprises Carol Lu, David Liss, Moacir dos Anjos, Paola Santoscoy, Fernando Cochiarale, Tadeo Chiarelli, Ricardo Resende, Virginia Prez-Ratton and Chus Martnez.

On the contrary, audiovisual, technological and new media art will continue to be presented under the umbrella of THE BLACK BOX programme, maintaining its philosophy as a space for the diffusion of new technological, electronic and audiovisual art, but with a new formal presentation. The curators Carolina Grau and Marc Olivier Wahler will be in charge of the selection.

Collecting.

The first steps in reinforcing ARCOs role as a business platform and meeting point for the international art market will be implemented in 2007. For that reason, the fair will focus mainly on collectors, both private and corporate. In that regard, the Guest Collectors programme bringing around 200 collectors from all over the world to Madrid will continue as usual, bringing on board leading experts to help us design the programme and incorporating ideas put forward by major international collectors.

Another new feature to boost the focus on the market and the fairs professional status is the extension of the professional-only time to two full days, Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th February, in order to facilitate the work of galleries and to foster investment.

In this new phase, the spotlight on corporate collecting also gains in intensity thanks to a programme designed to attract large corporations, banks, investment funds, and organizations in possession of significant art collections or collections in the process of creation.

Internationalization.

Heightening ARCOs international profile and influence is an ongoing goal of the art fair. However, the position and prestige it currently enjoys must now be optimised. The way forward consists in implementing new strategies of differentiation to compete on the world stage and attract large galleries, important projects and, subsequently, major collectors and buyers.

This stronger emphasis on internationalization requires an expansion project, which will begin with an analysis of the current art scene, and its recent evolution towards greater diversification, with the incorporation of recently created fairs having a major impact. At the same time, this new situation represents an opportunity while posing considerable competition for ARCO, which must reinforce its role, define its personality and adapt itself to the new scenario.

In this sense, the invitations to Korea and Brazil to take part as guest countries in 2007 and 2008, open up excellent opportunities for strengthening ARCOs profile in Asian and Latin American markets, where we are already working on new projects. In the first case, these projects include China, where ARCO is making an incursion with a selection of galleries at one of its main international fairs. In the second case, it will gradually extend from Brazil to the whole of Latin America, aimed at recovering our role as the gateway for Latin American art into Europe.

2008: New Venue and New Project.

While 2007 will see some new features added to a strongly consolidated existing project, the process of evolution will be fully visible in 2008. This will be given a physical reflection in the change of location to newly built exhibition halls at Feria Madrid. These new halls have a different architectural configuration, and will facilitate a structural change of the layout of the art fair, providing a framework for the consolidation of the new projects on which we are currently working, and reinforcing the priority expansion and market goals in ARCOs new project.