Five galleries you can't miss at Apertura Madrid

Table of Contents

1. Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend: how to start without trying to see it all
2. Gerhardt Braun Gallery: color, material, and contemporary abstraction by Willi Siber
3. Prat Nogueras Blanchard: art, artificial intelligence, and new forms of agency
4. Max Estrella: memory, time, and everyday objects by Diana Fonseca
5. Carlier | Gebauer: history, language, and a slower look by Iman Issa
6. Alzueta Gallery: the return and relevance of textile art
7. Five galleries, five ways to discover Madrid's art season

What you will discover in this article

• Five Madrid galleries worth visiting this season and what makes each exhibition particularly interesting.
• How artists like Willi Siber, Diana Fonseca, Iman Issa, Hito Steyerl, and Haegue Yang address very different issues, from color and material to memory, technology, and the relationship with local art history.
• Why Gallery Weekend is a good opportunity to discover the Madrid contemporary art scene with more context, by selecting what to see instead of trying to cover everything.

Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend

There's something inevitable during Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend: suddenly it feels like there's too much to see. New exhibitions, galleries opening the season, artists arriving in Madrid for the first time, and programs that make you want to explore the entire city in a single day.

But that's precisely the catch. You don't need to see everything to truly enjoy Gallery Weekend.

This year, the ArteGlobaL advisory team has selected five galleries that we believe are especially worth visiting this season. Five spaces and five very different exhibitions, ranging from abstraction and textile art to artificial intelligence, memory, everyday objects, and our relationship with the history of local scenes.

A small route to navigate through so many proposals and choose calmly.

Gerhardt Braun Gallery: Willi Siber and color from a different perspective

Detail of a work by Will Siber

At Gerhardt Braun Gallery, the season begins with Color Cosmos, an exhibition by German artist Willi Siber, a prominent figure in contemporary German abstraction.

The interesting thing here is that it's hard to decide whether we're looking at painting or sculpture. Siber works with wood, resins, steel, and high-gloss lacquers to create pieces where color, light, and volume change depending on our position in front of them.

Why visit? Because it's one of those exhibitions that reminds you that some works aren't fully appreciated on a screen. You have to move around them, get closer, step back, and observe how the physical surface changes with the incidence of light.

Color Cosmos opens on September 10 at Claudio Coello 72.

Prat Nogueras Blanchard: when the question is who (or what) is in control

Agnieszka Kurant, Nonorganic Life 6, 2025, Painting with metal salt crystals cultivated on printed and anodized aluminum plates, 162 × 111 × 4 cm. Image courtesy Prat Nogueras Blanchard.

Probably one of the most conceptually ambitious proposals in this selection is Feral Agency, at Prat Nogueras Blanchard, featuring works by Agnieszka Kurant, Hito Steyerl, and Haegue Yang.

The three artists start from a very contemporary question: what happens when decisions, creation, or knowledge no longer depend solely on individuals, but also on algorithms, technological systems, organisms, and networks?

The works feature processes involving artificial intelligence, biological processes, industrial objects, invisible economies, and speculative futures. The exhibition suggests that the ability to produce effects on the world may never have belonged exclusively to humans.

Why visit? Because it directly connects with some of the most pressing conversations of our time (AI, technology, nature, authorship) without offering overly simplified answers.

Feral Agency opens on September 10 at Beneficiencia, 18B, and will be on view through November 14.

Max Estrella: Diana Fonseca and the ability to turn the everyday into memory

Diana Fonseca, tentación-consumo, 2025, matches and burned matches, 68x125cm. Detail. Image courtesy Max Estrella.

At Max Estrella, Cuban artist Diana Fonseca presents Entelequia, her second solo exhibition at the Madrid gallery.

Here the conceptual register changes completely. Fonseca works with seemingly simple objects such as books, clocks, matches, padlocks, or pipes, and turns them into vehicles to talk about time, nostalgia, identity, and the complex experience of leaving one's place of origin behind.

A bookshelf gathers 250 books with the word "time" in their titles; a sound sculpture built with pipes recreates the profile of Havana; and dozens of matchboxes form the ocean that today separates the artist from her homeland.

Why visit? Because it demonstrates how an absolutely everyday object can be charged with meaning when its physical context changes. It is an exhibition to look at slowly and discover associations little by little.

Entelequia opens on September 10 at Santo Tomé, interior patio, and will be on view through October 31.

Carlier | Gebauer: Iman Issa and history, memory, and meaning

Iman Issa, Self Portrait (Self as Georges Henein), 2021, 3-D print, acrylic, epoxy, metal posts, 46 x 33 x 35 cm, text panel under glass, 12x 7cm, edition of 3 + 2 AP. Image courtesy Carlier Gebauer gallery.

Iman Issa arrives at Carlier | Gebauer's Madrid headquarters with the exhibition A Game, or So You May Think.

The artist, born in Cairo and based in Berlin, starts from forms we think we recognize (monuments, museum labels, historical photographs) to question how we construct meaning around objects and history.

Her sculptures, photographs, and texts borrow the codes of museums, archives, and monuments, but rearrange them so they stop functioning as closed answers. A description might lead to an unexpected object; a sculpture might refer to a monument that isn't present; the same photograph might contain several possible stories.

Why visit? Because it is an exhibition that invites you to look more slowly and to ask who decides what history is considered valid, what we understand by evidence, and how meaning changes depending on the context.

A Game, or So You May Think opens on September 10 at José Marañón 4 and will be on view through November 14.

Alzueta Gallery: the consolidation and return of textile art

Grau Garriga, DELOS, 1974, handmade tapestry woven on cotton warp using Gobelin and rug knot techniques, 236 x 266 cm. Detail. Image courtesy of Alzueta Gallery.

At Alzueta Gallery, the collective exhibition Texto significa tejido (Text means fabric) brings together different generations to explore the evolution of textile art from the seventies to today. The exhibition starts from the work of Grau Garriga and Dolors Oromí, two fundamental figures in the renewal of contemporary tapestry, and puts it in dialogue with artists of later generations.

The result of the exhibition allows us to understand something that has been happening in contemporary art for some time: textile has ceased to occupy a secondary or merely artisanal place to become a central artistic language in collecting.

The exhibition also brings together excellent works by María Tinaut, Isabel Servera, Lucía Vergara, Inés Sistiaga, Laura Zuccaro, and Maru Quiñonero, building a solid dialogue between technical heritage, raw material, and new visual investigations.

Why visit? Because it's an ideal opportunity to observe how techniques traditionally linked to craftsmanship are being revisited and revalued in international contemporary art.

Texto significa tejido opens on September 10 at Marqués de Monasterio 1, and will be on view through October 10.

Five galleries, five ways to begin

The interesting thing about visiting these exhibitions together is not to find a perfect thematic thread. It's quite the opposite.

In a few hours, you can go from Willi Siber's almost sculptural brilliance to Hito Steyerl's complex questions about artificial intelligence; from Diana Fonseca's personal and nostalgic memory to the way Iman Issa works with historical language; and end by discovering how textiles are once again playing a leading role in current aesthetic practices.

That's also what attracts us to Gallery Weekend: the possibility of understanding the city through its art galleries and letting one exhibition organically lead you to the next.

As we know that with such an extensive program of activities it can sometimes be difficult to decide where to start, with ArteGlobaL we will visit some of the galleries and exhibitions that interest us most, selecting the spaces with strict professional criteria and tracing routes that provide meaning and value. During our guided tours, we will contextualize the artists, the works, and the state of the art market to approach what we are seeing in a different way.

If you are considering taking your first steps in acquiring artworks or wish to structure your cultural heritage, we invite you to consult our basic guide to starting your art collection. With us, you only need the essential information; we take care of market analysis and management.