CAN Art Fair presents an inflatable installation by artist Yutaro Inagaki at Matadero Madrid during Art Week

• The work Winter Cut is located in Plaza Matadero, welcoming visitors to the fair, which coincides with ARCOmadrid.
• This installation unfolds as a large-scale inflatable sculpture that reflects on contemporary life, anonymity, and the fragility of what surrounds us.
• In addition, artist Mónica Mays has intervened in Nave 0 at Matadero with Pulgar, a site-specific piece as part of the “Abierto x Obras” program.
• The Artistic Residencies Center opens its doors to showcase the work of residents in visual arts, music, education, and research.
• Cineteca Madrid presents a special program including a session focused on video art pioneer Paul McCarthy, with the artist in attendance.
• Two leading figures in curating, Estrella de Diego and Germán Labrador, have been given carte blanche to reflect on the relationship between cinema and art at Cineteca.
• FORMA Design Fair, the international fair dedicated to collectible design, will debut in Nave Una at Matadero from March 4 to 8.

Matadero Madrid, a contemporary creation center under the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, celebrates Art Week with a special program and once again hosts the International Fair of New Contemporary Art CAN Art Fair Madrid (formerly UVNT), now marking its tenth anniversary. Between March 5 and 8, the fair welcomes visitors with Winter Cut, an inflatable site-specific installation by Japanese artist Yutaro Inagaki, based in London, currently installed in Plaza Matadero.

As part of CAN Art Madrid’s Public Art program, Yutaro Inagaki has transformed Plaza Matadero with this installation conceived specifically for the urban space. The piece appears as a large-scale inflatable sculpture that disrupts the cityscape while reflecting on contemporary life, anonymity, and the fragility of our surroundings.

For years, Inagaki has used the puffer jacket as a central motif in his artistic practice, understanding it as a form of everyday armor: a functional object that protects the body while also homogenizing identity in urban environments. Embraced across subcultures, tourists, fashion enthusiasts, and those prioritizing functionality, the puffer jacket becomes a shared symbol of city life.

In his sculptural work, the artist uses black objects found in urban spaces—keyboards, padded jackets, tires—to create a series of black stray dogs inhabiting a speculative, near–science fiction universe already present in his painting. The inflatable piece presented for the 10th anniversary of CAN Art Madrid reinterprets this series of dogs wrapped in puffer jackets, bringing them into public space through monumental scale and ephemeral material. Beyond its iconic reference to the balloon dog, Winter Cut asserts itself as a work without permanence. Its existence depends on the air that sustains it and disappears the moment that air is gone.

CAN Art Fair Madrid will feature more than 50 galleries, half of them international, marking the highest number of participants to date. This edition also introduces three new sections. Counterflow, curated by Croatian Saša Bogojev, brings together bold proposals honoring artists who move against the current. Meanwhile, the CAN Design program, curated by Marisa Santamaría, explores the intersection between art and design. Also new is the Solo/Duo Projects section, showcasing emerging galleries presenting monographic proposals.

Dialogue with Latin American art will once again be present in Foco LATAM, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné and organized around the concept of “New Surrealisms.” In addition, the Young Galleries program, which invites galleries under three years old, will double its space and present ten projects.

Art Week at Matadero Madrid

Until Sunday, March 8, Matadero Madrid will host a wide-ranging program of activities as part of Art Week, coinciding with the 45th edition of ARCOmadrid, the Forma Design Fair, and Art Madrid. Exhibitions, talks, film screenings, artist encounters, and open studios will bring the center’s activity closer to both locals and visitors.

Pulgar, a site-specific work by Mónica Mays in Nave 0

Artist Mónica Mays presents Pulgar in Nave 0 as part of the “Abierto x Obras” program. From February 26 to May 24, a new series of sculptures tracing memory and combustion—from Ribera de Curtidores to the former slaughterhouse’s cold chamber—shapes an installation where refrigeration, the instrumentalization of the body, and fire collide within the exhibition space.

Mónica Mays’ practice spans sculpture and installation, intertwining autobiography, material processes, and historical archives. Her works are assemblages that take the form of animated domestic objects that overflow, distort, or exist in states of transformation. Drawing from Catholic body horror and Baroque iconography, she works with excess, ornamentation, and exuberance as spaces where ambiguity and opacity can exist. Mays was an artist-in-residence at Matadero Madrid in 2021 and recently received the ARCO 2025 Award.

Open Studios at the Artistic Residencies Center

The Artistic Residencies Center, located in Nave 16, is a space for work and coexistence among artists and cultural agents who share processes of research and creation. While activities throughout the year offer glimpses into this work, the open studios are when residents present their projects to the public, offering a key opportunity to take the pulse of contemporary Spanish art.

On Thursday, March 5 and Saturday, March 7, from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, participants include visual artists Andrea Aguilera, Taxio Ardaz, Antonio Fernández Alvira, Mar Guerrero, Martínez Bellido, Julia Llerena, Elisa Pardo Puch, and Simón Sepúlveda; Hodei Herreros Rodríguez; music resident Maite Gallardo Alba; Costa Badía (art and education); the studio Debajo del sombrero; AMECUM; and research residents Andrea Muniaín and Paula Ramos, Calin Segal, and Álvaro Soto.

Cineteca Madrid: linking cinema and visual arts

Until March 12, Cineteca Madrid becomes a meeting point between film and art, a laboratory where images are explored as experience, gesture, and knowledge. The program opened with Albert Serra’s latest film, fe sense obres morta és, a radical and sensory approach to Antoni Tàpies.

On March 4, artist Paul McCarthy will attend a special screening of two of his films: A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve, Cooking Show, Kitchen and A&E, Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve, Mother, presented in collaboration with SOLO.

Cineteca also gives carte blanche to curators and theorists Estrella de Diego and Germán Labrador, who will propose programs exploring avant-garde, artistic creation, the body, memory, and cultural history. De Diego will present three sessions featuring works by Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, and Clouzot, including a talk titled Women Choreographers Filmmakers: The Cinema of Maya Deren and Yvonne Rainer.

Germán Labrador will explore marginal poetics, youth cultures, and alternative memories of Spain’s Transition, with screenings of Viva la muerte (Fernando Arrabal, 1971), Arrebato (Iván Zulueta, 1968), and Demonios en el jardín (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 1982).

The program also includes collective sessions, premieres such as El brujo: Julio Zachrisson (Diego Julián, 2025) and Yrupẽ (Candela Sotos, 2025), and With a Little Help From My Friends, curated by artist Sally Gutiérrez Dewar. Tickets are available at cinetecamadrid.com.

FORMA Design Fair: collectible design

Nave 17 at Matadero Madrid will host the first Spanish fair dedicated to collectible design, FORMA Design Fair Madrid, from March 5 to 8. The event brings together over 40 exhibitors and includes a public program of talks and professional activities titled (Per)FORMA.

Organized by Madrid Design Festival in collaboration with the City Council’s Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport, the fair will gather some of the most exciting studios, galleries, brands, and designers on the current scene.