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Exhibition Design at the Ateneo de Madrid 

Following a preview presented at the International Contemporary Art Fair ARCO 2025, the exhibition “Singular is Plural” organized by Fundación Caja Extremadura at the Ateneo de Madrid celebrates the 10th anniversary of its Obra Abierta Visual Arts Prize with a show that brings together works by 12 artists from different generations, working with diverse media and discourses.

In the FCE pavilion for ARCO, the challenge was twofold: to give form to the intentions behind artist Maider López’s work — the sole piece on display — while also suggesting a broader collection. In this new exhibition, the goal is to reveal a collection composed of highly diverse artworks, giving each its own space within a shared discourse and environment.

The design for the Anselma Room at the Ateneo de Madrid creates a relatively independent setting for each of the works by using greenhouse shade mesh arranged in parallel lines. These screens are supported by lightweight wooden slat structures that, nonetheless, cast shadows to shape a striking and delicate landscape, making the anniversary event memorable.

The individual rooms for viewing the works are shaped by ‘filters’ that dissolve into a landscape of content. Constructed from light wooden frames and translucent fabric, these elements separate without isolating – allowing for connection, unity, and continuity among the pieces. The arrangement of parallel and sequential spaces brings depth and narrative to an otherwise difficult room. It was essential that the structures be lightweight, easy to assemble, often self-supporting, and leave no trace. For this reason, the design is bold, informal, and eye-catching, reinforcing the sense that the existing walls are unnecessary.

The green translucent fabric ‘walls’ are aligned in both the mezzanine and semi-basement levels, simulating continuity between them and creating “another landscape for another life”—a kind of technologized, playful, critical, and productive space that overlays the world we think we inhabit.

With white walls and dark corners, the green of the screens completes a landscape that subtly evokes a dissolved, camouflaged flag of the Spanish region of Extremadura, accompanying the visitor’s journey throughout the exhibition.

PAVILION AT ART FAIR ARCO25 IN MADRID

Fundación Caja Extremadura presents, in its space at the 44th International Fair of Contemporary Art ARCO2025, in Madrid, one of the winning works from its annual art competition—the video “Mimicking the birds mimicking the waves” by artist Maider López—within the “Obra Abierta” program, curated by YGBART (Lucía Ybarra and Rosina Gómez-Baeza).

Maider López‘s work challenges our notions of the “frontier”, proposing trans-scalar and interspecies structures through mimesis and imitation. She invites us to play with boundaries, testing small accidents that, without intervention, seem to be rigid physical and conceptual barriers. In the video, a simple choreography appears to engage in dialogue with one of these limits, encouraging an exploration of how far transformation is possible. López has developed some of her most renowned works on a landscape scale, employing spatial transformation processes and modifications of use closely related to architecture.

The design of Fundación Caja Extremadura’s space at ARCO2025, created by Ángel Borrego Cubero / OSS, is an interplay of planes and volumes that mimics the way people “test” the waves in Maider López’s video. It invites the visitors of the fair to interact through a choreography that mirrors the one in the video. It forms a landscape where Fundación Caja Extremadura reinterprets itself and engages visitors, inviting them to discover future collaborative activities.

The Fundación’s presence at ARCO2025 is conceived as a spatial experiment: it showcases a single artwork while also pointing to the archive of the “Obra Abierta” collection. The design and choice of materials blur the boundary between storage and exhibition, suggesting that the artwork is part of an archive, a process, and a broader activity.

The scenography created for Fundación Caja Extremadura invites visitors to share their interpretation of the concept of ‘frontier,’ a term that, in some way, also defines the Spanish region of Extremadura, which borders Portugal. Recorded testimonies from visitors would later be displayed within the space itself.

Spain Pavilion at FIL 2024

BAJO EL MISMO SOL (UNDER THE SAME SUN)

“Este Sol de justicia en toda parte, sin hacer división o diferencia, su clara lumbre de piedad reparte, a ninguno negando su presencia” —Emblemas morales de Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco (1610) /This powerful Sun shines everywhere, without separating or distinguishing, its clear light of mercy it does share, denying its presence to no one.” — Moral Emblems by Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco (1610)

The 38th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair FIL, held in 2024, featured Spain as the Guest of Honor. Under the theme “Camino de ida y vuelta” (Round Trip), its participation, coordinated by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), sought to portray the image of a plural, diverse, and multicultural country that serves as a communication link between Europe and South America—a bridge connecting both sides of the Atlantic.

We drew inspiration from an emblem by Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, where the same sun illuminates two shores, two cities, two countries, the entire world. This image invites a contemporary interpretation that speaks of generosity, empathy, multiplicity, and universality. Diverse cultures, seemingly distant, share common resources and traditions. We understand the “camino de ida y vuelta” as the natural condition of this deep connection: cities facing each other yet close, gazing at one another across the sea, a field, and a shared sun. Our pavilion design stems from this idea of shared space, opening into two cities, two grandstands, and two interconnected labyrinths that mirror each other, creating a place for meetings, dialogue, interaction, community rest, and exchanged perspectives.

The omnipresent and powerful sun in Covarrubias’ image also reminds us of the collective anxiety about global warming—an urgent call to reduce the impact of human activity on the planet. For this reason, we propose a radically sustainable pavilion built with systems and elements based on recycling and circularity, aiming for zero waste. Its construction uses sustainable and reusable materials sourced from local industries and economies (construction scaffolding, recycled cardboard, lightweight wooden frames), as well as materials recovered from other exhibitions and local building sites (such as carpets used in previous fairs, repurposed here for sound absorption).

The pavilion’s design reinterprets the wall-like architecture of Mexico and Spain, using lightweight materials and a structure that favors transparency, interplay of light and shadows, and overlapping perspectives. Rather than a fixed form with specific dimensions, we aimed to create spaces and atmospheres that encourage connection. The proposal was conceived with flexibility in mind, allowing the dimensions of various elements to adapt to needs, content, and available resources.

Although part of the program is planned for the upper level, all public activities are fully accessible on the ground floor. Additionally, the design includes the possibility of installing a lifting platform to ensure accessibility.

The choice of standardized and locally available elements facilitates both the assembly and disassembly of the pavilion, enhancing practicality and reducing its environmental impact.

El borde de una herida

El borde de una herida curated by Juan Guardiola, as a co-production between Centro Centro and CDAN could be defined as a “poetic and political reflection on the migrant’s journey from the perspective of contemporary creation.” The exhibition opened on February 16, at CentroCentro in Madrid and stayed open through June 4 2017.

The exhibition design of OSS supports the curatorial discourse and facilitates the tour of the exhibition. One single element of the intervention is perceived and concentrates function and meaning: it is a fence made with scaffolding and greenhouse fabric, which describes a slightly zigzag path, located in the central section of the exhibition. In a first level, the function of the fence is to guide the visitor in a space that is confusing as well as to separate an area of light from a darker one in which audiovisuals are shown. This contrast in light levels also makes a reference to the dramatic play of darkness and visibility at play in the most controlled borders. A second reading may reveal that this fence guides while forcing the visitor to navigate a narrower and more delineated path. It looms threatening and uncomfortable between the room’s walls and reduces the personal space of the visitors and their movements. The materials used refer to two sectors of the economy where most immigrants usually work in Spain: construction and greenhouse agriculture.

Urban Space Station

A prototype for the general invasion of rooftops and other residual spaces with high biodiversity, redemptive ecosystems, USS-s serve as seeds, catalyzing a natural recuperation of the city’s surfaces. Their uses range from scientific and educative to recreational, while they capture carbon emissions and generate oxygen. ETFE’s double skin allows for the structure to be lightweight and creates a heat exchange. Rainwater accumulates in underbelly bags, while the texture design of the structure itself helps channel the airflow to generate electricity. Secondary use as ultra-fine particulate collector has demonstrated capable of passively cleaning street-level air near host buildings. A 40% of this prototype (USS 1.0) was built and tested within the exhibition Souls & Machines, Digital Art & New Media, held in 2008, at the National Art Museum Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 2016, a 1:1 prototype was built for the Art Triennial Emscherkunst. Placed on top of an existent building, docked onto the air conditioning of the surrounding buildings, it created a cleaning circulation; the building’s waste air and warmth were filtered by the USSs plants, cleaned, and enriched with oxygen before it was led back into the building.

Factoria Cultural Madrid

Factoría Cultural is the adaptation of a hall in Matadero Madrid to house an incubator of creative industries start-ups. We used very few, cheap, and easy to install materials, and we tried to achieve with them as many different and distinct work areas as possible, adapted to different needs. Three volumes near the entrance organize the space, folding and compressing the circulations around it. This creates a gradient, from compact to expansive, from busy to silent, that helps achieve variety in workspaces. In a little less than one month we built a reversible, vacuum-packed, 105-eur/m2 work, adaptable to the multitude of situations the client asked for.

To house the needed 120 workspaces in a 399 sq. m. floor area (that needed to be further reduced to 340 sq. m. in order to maintain a public pass-through) was impossible, unless we found more space using the height of the hall. This created additional problems since there was not enough money to achieve the construction of a second floor by traditional means. We decided to use very simple building systems: the cheapest local pine lumber, all in the same standard size, which simplified the supply and construction of the structure, and multi-wall polycarbonate, very lightweight and in large sheets, which allowed for the walls to be finished in just one day. We were able to achieve 85 more sq.m and crucially to split functions in two levels, which allows for more flexibility in use that the client is now making very good use of.

Spanische Spione

At the exhibition Spanische Spione everything is dominated by a capsule which can be reached by going up the stairs. This capsule raises over the usual level of artistic enjoying, playing with the idea of the art as an instrument of elevation or social ascent, which is what gives the name to the piece: AAAEE (Art As An Elevating Experience). The position of the capsule turns the directors of the art gallery into pieces of their own venue, since one can watch them in their office trough the methacrylate. AAAEE was first shown in 2004 at the International Art Fair ARCO Madrid, where the installation converted the art fair into an art work, by the appropriating of the general view of it.

City Display Barcelona

This generative public art installation was assigned to us by Abalos & Herreros, architects of the Barcelona Urban Waste Treatment Plant, which was the main facade of the Forum de las Culturas de Barcelona in 2004. It seemed interesting to use the opportunity of the large waste treatment machine to produce a prototype of a new contemporary façade that would interact with people and allow them dialogue in a public space. Visitors to the Forum de las Culturas could write messages with their mobile phones live, in a size of 55×16 meters, which made them a public mode of communication. Another board would be located in the moving urban landscape that constitutes the Barcelona ring-road, providing a fleeting show to thousands of drivers: 440 blue LED bulbs would serve to monitor the plant’s sensors, making visible environmental data related to their own garbage to the citizens of Barcelona or any other type of information in a graphic, fast and intuitive way or even retransmissions of the sea that is behind, blocked by the same Waste Treatment Plant that serves as support thus becoming sort of a huge X-ray screen.

AAAEE 2

The AAAEE (Art As An Elevating Experience)’s second version was developed with a similar concept to the one we had designed for the 2004 edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair ARCO Madrid. It was another opportunity to convert the art fair into an art work, trough appropriating a general view of the fair. The visitors were elevated over the ground level. Art is converted into AAAEE, in a literal way, physically, into an elevating experience. This is also a fairground and a journey. The piece turns the fair’s space into a “Playtime” with a Mars orange tone, into a colorful landscape that contrasts with the extreme clarity of the object’s perception and the people inside.

AAAEE 1

The director of the International Art Fair Madrid ARCO asked a chill-out space. The purpose was to produce a rest space where you had to do more exercise. In first place, the rest was produced by forcing the body to leave the horizontal movement and to climb onto to the back of an object 6 meters high. The object is an architectonical element, an out of place stair leading to nowhere. Depending on the moment and the height, the stair changes into a viewpoint, a meeting point, bleaches from where to see a show, a fashion runway, a place from where to look out and a place where to be seen. In second place, the rest was for the eyes and the sight under. The void of the pavilion was recovered and used in order to see from above. Art seen from 6 meters up.