Generations: quarter of a century and new directions

Madrid,

The exhibitions of its first editions were not presented in La Casa Encendida, but in the Casa de América, but this center, together with the Montemadrid Foundation (formerly the Caja Madrid Foundation), has always been found since its opening, in 2002, behind Generationsone of the leading programs within the dissemination of emerging art made in Spain. This project arose, to which up to 18,000 candidates have participated, in order to provide young authors, under 35 years of age at the time of their participation and residents in our country, tools for the production and dissemination of their works among critics. specialized and the general public.

Pablo Berástegui, director of La Casa since 2023, explained today that the 25th anniversary of the initiative will be an occasion to celebrate and rethink the operation of Generations with a view to its continuity, if possible, for another quarter of a century, and to be more useful to its protagonists, the new creators. The anniversary will give rise to a set of activities that will debut with the presentation of a commemorative exhibition that includes a selection of just over fifty works developed by the winners of this competition since 2000 – it can be visited now, and has been curated by Rocío Gracia Ipiña, responsible for the event in its beginnings – and which will continue with a recovered itinerancy (after Madrid it will be taken to the MARCO in Vigo) and in two other exhibitions throughout the year. year. They will be “Where will the bird that doesn’t fly go”, from May to July, which will have as curators Calvo Ulloa and Julia Castelló, winners at the time of Inéditos, which will display new projects by some of the winners of Generations in these two and a half decades and that will also travel; and “Gold woven with straw”, by Beatriz Alonso, which will bring together new works by authors who we can consider still emerging and who, due to age, were not eligible for the first call (having been born before 1965). We will also be able to attend three screening cycles and a few conferences.

As for “Twenty-four years and one day”, the name given to the commemorative exhibition so as not to overlap it with “Generations 2025”, the other exhibition proposal of La Casa on the same dates, it brings together sixty-four works (a dozen of them, projections). of authors who were recognized in one of these calls since 2000; Their names demonstrate the important role of this proposal as a starting point, or the beginning of the consolidation, of many trajectories: June Crespo, Eva Fábregas, Carlos Irijalba, Teresa Solar, Juan Zamora, Cristina Lucas, Dora García, Julia Spínola, Cristina Garrido, Lara Almarcegui, Fuentesal Arenillas, Pedro G. Romero, Oriol Vilanova, Juan López or Fernández Pello…

His creations have been selected among the more than 350 that are housed in the funds of the Montemadrid Foundation; Generations It was not initially considered as an acquisition prize, but as scholarships, and later as awards granted by disciplines and later to projects, but the pieces chosen for years do become part of the collection of that institution. For now it does not have a permanent exhibition venue for the public, so this proposal is a good occasion to remember, and therein lies part of its emotional value.

Twenty-four years and one day. La Casa Encendida, 2025. Photography: Maru Serrano

It is difficult to establish common themes, and many of the authors represented here in fact tend to go beyond them, but Gracia Ipiña has tried to draw the viewer’s attention to the constant reinterpretation by new authors of the genres as established by the Academies of Fine Arts : in the rooms that make up the route we will find other forms of portrait, still life, landscape, costumbrismo or captures of history; you derive from the representation and from our own imagination in that already significant period, regardless of what is represented. In short, experiments around the expression of the self, materials, space, events and our typisms.

The curator’s purpose has been that this exhibition can be viewed as the day after each of the twenty-four Generations precedents, as a sum of the memory whose fruit continues and as an opportunity to reflect on what has changed between the first creators present, born as we said in the second half of the sixties, and the last beneficiaries of this program, now summoned in La Casa Encendida and almost all of them were born in the nineties. In his words, The hypothesis is presented as a game: to find out if there is an evolution of the strategies and languages ​​with which surviving concerns are addressed.. Thus, the word generation It expands its echoes beyond bringing together those born every decade: it appeals on the one hand to incubation or conception processes and, on the other, to the gestation of a family or lineage from them.

Twenty-four years and one day. La Casa Encendida, 2025. Photography: Maru Serrano
Twenty-four years and one day. La Casa Encendida, 2025. Photography: Maru Serrano

When selecting these more than sixty pieces collected – for their return to the rooms, restorers have been involved in some cases -, in addition to criteria of formal quality and their representativeness of the temporal arc of Generationsits possible links with the rest of the projects planned for this commemoration and also with each other, as well as that its authors continue to be active.

Due to inevitable spatial issues, the montage can be variegated, but areas of greater noise and impact (sound and visual) and silence alternate; for Gracia Ipiña, More than an exercise in history, this is an exercise in memory (and gluttony) with which to navigate the twenty-five years that separate us.

Twenty-four years and one day. La Casa Encendida, 2025. Photography: Maru Serrano

Twenty-four years and one day. La Casa Encendida, 2025. Photography: Maru Serrano

“Twenty-four years and one day”

THE HOUSE ON

C/ Ronda de Valencia, 2

Madrid

From January 24 to June 29, 2025

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