Another pleasure is possible at CAN Art Ibiza

A collapsed Ibiza… And we're not even in July yet. Anyway, that's how things are these days: global gentrification. Ibiza Art Week kicks off with the grand opening of CAN Art Ibiza, the fair founded by Sergio Sancho four years ago and very well received by the Consell (Spanish regional government) and the island's cultural stakeholders.

Sancho founded Urvanity, one of the Madrid fairs parallel to ARCO, thinking about the type of painting – painting reigns here, there is not even a video and only a site-specific one – that he would like to see at a fair. He was successful and is repeating the formula at CAN, we would say adapting the offer to the presumed tastes of the foreign collector, mainly German as we pointed out a couple of weeks ago regarding Palma Art Week, relying on a curator who has already worked for the fair for several editions, the Croatian Sasa Bogogev.

The truth is that the stereotypes about macro-club tourism are not entirely exaggerated, and Ibiza's cultural scene was almost nonexistent: here you'll find the Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibiza, which, coinciding with Art Week, has scheduled a Barceló retrospective, which certainly isn't too original, although the selection of ceramics and paintings from the nineties is good, a handful of galleries, and another handful of artists who live here quietly and discreetly and exhibit outside.

CAN Ibiza thus received immediate support from institutions and businesses, and four years later, it's already the center of a new cultural circuit: the vast majority of participating galleries are foreign, and collectors from all over the world come to the island, taking advantage of the opportunity to visit the queen of fairs in Basel. In short, a resounding success for Sergio Sancho.

The fair… Let’s say that one possible interpretation is that the tone is set by the Veta stand, which is open and located right in front of the entrance and consists of a motley collection of strident, colorful and dense paintings – Santiago Ydáñez, Matías Sánchez … – in which there are even some shiny materials and, in the center of the space, a pair of sculptures by Julio Galindo consisting of ceramic vases decorated with banal images placed on boxes adorned with banal logos.

It's not that the fair is cluttered and colorful—and banal —there are very elegant stands; but there is a possible—and disturbing—penetration of a neo-kitsch reminiscent of what we saw a few days ago in the new German galleries in Palma. It's not dominant, but it's there. The truth is that all of this responds to the curator's taste, working with a selection of artists rather than galleries. The focus on painting, especially figurative painting, is risky in these times: iconic chaos is total, there is a corruption perfectly similar to that of AI, the product of frenzied inbreeding. Something of that is in the air here.

Can Ibiza is a comprehensive fair—it also offers affordable options— with thirty participating galleries, plus four design studios this year. It also includes its corresponding Off Program, featuring Ibizan artists, a public art event, and various exhibitions in galleries and art centers.

Among the artists exhibiting in the thirty participating galleries, Bogogev has also highlighted twelve of them, a list that includes several Spaniards and with which he would not disagree: Teresa Lanceta (to whose textile work 1MiraMadrid has dedicated its stand, which is the best of the fair by far), Laia García (at the Herrero de Tejada in Madrid), José Lerma, Edu Carrillo (at Veta), and Kevin Bray (at Future Gallery, in Berlin, an artist who combines digital images and kitsch frames).

Also Aiste Stancikaite, Gori Mora (from the Pelaires gallery ), the sculptor Shuyi Cao (from the Gathering in London, who assembles biomaterials), Hunter Amost, Andrei Pokrovskii, Charlie De Voet (from the Barbé gallery in Ghent, who accumulates glazes until achieving an almost sculptural painting), and the artists from the Indonesian gallery Sun Contemporary (Bali), who work with biomaterials.

Among the spaces, we would highlight Valerius (Luxembourg), dedicated to the textile work of Delphine Dénéréaz; La Bibi + Reus (Palma), which brings Bel Fullanai and Grip Face; Sorondo Projects, from Barcelona, ​​with a stand dedicated to erotic drawings by Víctor González and paintings by Miranda Makaroff; and Kant Gallery (Copenhagen), featuring the paintings of Hans Van der Ham.

And Rafael Pérez Hernando (Madrid), who has embraced the subtle painting of Din Matamoro; Tönnheim Gallery, which opened a Madrid location in what was the Galería Nueva Carabanchel, with two powerful artists, John Robinson and Cristóbal Ochoa; and 532 Gallery, with locations in New York and Basel. All with natural light. A distinct pleasure on the island of mass pleasure.