Swab Barcelona announces the 70 galleries that will participate in the 17th edition

The Fira Internacional d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, which will celebrate its 17th edition from October 3 to 6, announces the 70 galleries that will participate in this edition, 23 national and 47 from 20 countries around the world, presenting works from more of 200 artists.

For the second year and after the good reception of the last edition. Swab 2023 will be held in the Textile Pavilion of Fira de Barcelona , located at Avinguda Rius i Taulet, 10. Located on the site of the old Textile Art Palace of the Barcelona Universal Exhibition of 1929, the pavilion of 'industrial aesthetics has more than 3,000m2 that will be fully occupied by the fair.

Swab 2024 will focus on the effervescent artistic panorama of East Asia , with the city of Taipei , referring to the contemporary Asian scene, as the protagonist of the programs SOLO Show by Vila Casas and Video Box, dedicated to video art, and Tokyo and Seoul , as protagonists of the curated program Focus Tokyo - Seoul, which brings together young spaces from both metropolises.

Focus Tokyo Seoul. MJK Gallery (Tokio)_Endless, Boundless and Aimless, Daichi Sato, 2024

The fair, which acts as a platform for experimenting with emerging artistic proposals , has 8 programs : General Program , dedicated to established galleries; Swab Seed , independent and self-managed spaces by artists; My First Art Fair , newly created galleries that have not participated in any international fair and Performance .

In addition, the fair also has curated programs : Focus Tokyo - Seoul , focused on the artistic connection between the two cities; Emerging LATAM , with new proposals for emerging Latin American art; SOLO Show by Vila Casas , which unites peripheral Catalan projects with those from other territories, and Video Box , dedicated to exploring underrepresented contexts through its audiovisual production.

True to its idiosyncrasy, the fair maintains a human scale, a close spirit, and prioritizes the quality and diversity of its program. The selection committee, the collaborating curators and the management of the fair opt for the freshest and most current proposals from the national and international scene , giving visibility to young and innovative projects and integrating new spaces in the art circuit . An example of this is My First Art Fair , supported by the Swab Barcelona Foundation, a program that grants grants to three galleries with less than two years of existence, giving them the opportunity to participate for the first time in a fair of art. The result is a fair that presents a global vision of the new trends in contemporary art.

The Swab 2024 selection committee is made up of Omar López-Chahoud , director of the Untitled Miami fair, Jérôme Pantalacci , director of the French Art-o-Rama fair, Isa Natalia Castilla , director of the Material Fair in Mexico City, Domenico de Chirico , independent curator, and the collectors José Luis Lorenzo, Marie Elena Angulo, Jesper Stieler, Pedro Jaile and Laura Peh .

General Program. Soho Revue. Burnout Alanna Hernandez, 2023. 91,4x122 cm

The General Program , central pillar of the fair, includes national and international galleries with a notable track record in the contemporary art circuit. This year, the program will have 34 galleries.

4710 Contemporary Art Gallery (Tbilisi), a-topos' (Paris, Marseille), Abbozzo Gallery (Toronto), ADN (Barcelona), Alessandro Albanese (Milà), ATM (Gijón), Beta Contemporary (Barcelona), BLOOM (Düsseldorf) , CHAxARTxRTM (Rotterdam), Contemporary Cluster (Rome), Dilalica (Barcelona), ESCAT GALLERY - Casa Granados (Barcelona), ethall (L'Hospitalet), Fermay Gallery (Palma de Mallorca), Fran Reus Gallery (Palma de Mallorca), Kahmann Gallery (Naarden), LaiSun Keane (Boston), Noaddress (Rio de Janeiro), Palmadotze (Santa Margarida and the Monks), Pantocrator (Barcelona), Raffaela de Chiricco (Milà), Rafael Pérez Hernando (Madrid), Reiners Contemporary ( Marbella), seven art space (Valencia), Shazar ( Naples), Siddiq Projects (Hamburg), Sissi Club (Marseille), Soho Revue (London), Split + Neven (London), Stain (Palma de Mallorca), Tempesta (Milan), VANGAR (Valencia), Yafteh (Tehran) and Zielinsky (Barcelona/Porto Alegre).

The Swab Seed program showcases 10 independent, self-managed spaces by artists who share experimentation as a common denominator. A program that gives visibility to new platforms and proposals that are shaking up the contemporary scene.

Swab Seed will feature: AllArtNow (Damascus), CASA ESPACIO (Barcelona), Chilli Art Project (London), Juliana Sorondo (Barcelona), OLA Lab (Barcelona), NAAN Gallery (Tirana), Post Modern Collection (Amstelveen), Silica ( Cannes), TAKEOVER (Beirut) and Tiny Art Gallery (The Hague).

The My First Art Fair program presents three newly created galleries that have not yet participated in any international fair. The spaces are funded by the Swab Barcelona Foundation, with the aim of facilitating the entry of new voices into the international artistic circuit.

The program will include: PLATO (Évora), Studio/Chapple (London) and TUBE (Palma de Mallorca). At Swab 2024, the spaces Mármol Project and Terramoto Studio , from the city of Porto, will present a performance that will include activations designed to encourage a provocative and dynamic dialogue with the fair's visitors.

Curated programs

Focus Tokyo - Seoul. The project, curated by Kelvin Kyung Kun Park, brings together the artistic perspectives of 6 exhibition spaces in the two cities: Gallery 2 (Seoul), Ingahee (Seoul), MATTER (Tokyo), MJK Gallery (Tokyo), ooooon (Seoul) and Willing N Dealing (Seoul).

Emerging LATAM. The Emerging LATAM program, curated by Argentinian curator and artist Santiago Gasquet, co-director of the PIEDRAS gallery (Buenos Aires), includes 6 Latin American spaces with less than five years of experience , which are among the most promising of the contemporary Latin American scene. The program will feature: Andrea Brunson (Chile), Collectio (Chile), Crudo (Argentina), Escombro (Mexico), Paseolab (Lima) and Tramo (Argentina).

SOLO Show by Vila Casas. The programme, promoted by the Vila Casas Foundation, was born out of the interest of observing projects originating in Barcelona and its surroundings. This year, the program extends its ties by also hosting the city of Taipei. The result is a dialogue between 4 galleries in Barcelona , curated by Carla Gimeno , and 4 galleries in Taipei , curated by Yipei Lee. Shishishibook (Taipei), EQUAL™︎ (Taipei), ss space space (Taipei), SUAVEART (Taipei), FASE (Barcelona), Halfhouse (Barcelona), Raccoon Projects (Barcelona) and espai 19 (Barcelona).

Video Box. The Vídeo Box program, dedicated to exploring different contexts through its audiovisual production, presents in this edition four Taiwanese artists, in a project curated by Yipei Lee. Under the title Intimacy, The moments of Social Skin, the proposal delves into the intangible forces of geopolitics, gender, power and culture that have shaped contemporary Taiwanese social development.