©Courtesy of Ventana Project.

Ventana Project began in Berlin, in shop windows, metro stations and mobile structures. Now it is expanding in Madrid. What did Madrid offer that made you grow the project here?​

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Ventana began as an exhibition experiment that aimed to expand the circulation of contemporary art through spaces that challenged the logic of the white cube, while at the same time bringing the work into the public realm. This not only created an encounter with audiences who did not usually engage with this kind of cultural content, but also allowed artists to explore their work in different contexts. In that sense, without fully realizing it at the time, we were creating a kind of laboratory in which we brought together different elements without having a very clear idea of what would happen.​​

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The project began to grow quite organically, and we started organizing group shows and formats that moved closer to more conventional exhibition spaces, while still maintaining different temporalities and dynamics. I think one of the continuities of the project has been our close relationship with the artists and the way they also become involved in our vision and curatorial practice.​​

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Madrid is also a consequence of that process. Through conversations and travels, the opportunity arose to organize an exhibition there, and little by little more connections began to form. At the same time, one of the members of the project moved to Madrid and created Doble Erre, a hybrid space that permanently hosts the gallery’s exhibitions, while we continue to preserve the project’s more fluid and mobile condition.

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In that sense, Madrid has become a place where our exhibition program can develop with greater continuity because we now have a more permanent space. But as a city, we have also found a context that feels open and has a certain appetite for other kinds of curatorial proposals.

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As a consequence of this growth, we also began participating in art fairs, which was a completely new experience for us and introduced new questions into the project. Entering a context more directly connected to the market led us to think differently about the circulation of artworks, our relationship with collectors, and the ways in which an artistic practice becomes inserted into certain economic structures. Rather than understanding this only as a commercial dimension, we became interested in engaging more closely with the reflections and discussions surrounding art when it comes into contact with the market, and in considering how these logics can also affect production, exhibition, and the way we accompany artists.

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Our experiences in Berlin and our personal backgrounds in Latin America undoubtedly mean that our understanding of art is shaped by cultural tensions, different ways of approaching artistic production, and different ways of relating to spaces, audiences, artists, and now also the market.

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I think this is precisely where an important part of Ventana’s identity emerges: in not feeling that we fully belong to a single scene or to one particular way of working. The project has been built through movement, encounters, and the possibility of working across different contexts. Berlin, Madrid, and Latin America do not function only as geographical locations, but also as references that continuously reshape the way we look at, select, and accompany projects.

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We are also interested in keeping this condition open. Even though there is now greater continuity in Madrid, Ventana does not aim to become a completely fixed gallery or to abandon the possibility of appearing in other spaces, participating in other circuits, and developing collaborations. This mobility has been part of its nature from the beginning, and it is probably also what allows us to maintain a more experimental relationship with curatorial practice.

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Ultimately, rather than imposing a fixed structure, we are interested in Ventana continuing to operate as a place where different practices, artists, spaces, audiences, and contexts can meet, and where each exhibition or new experience can slightly reshape the way we understand what Ventana can be.

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​Marion Paquette's exhibition opened only weeks ago at your Madrid space. Sofia Alazraki lives and works in Madrid, and you move between Madrid and Berlin. On the scaffold, textile devices meet staged objects and digital abstraction. How do you see the dialogue between these three practices, and what part of Madrid travels with them to Barcelona?

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​We think there is something that connects these practices, as well as our own curatorial directions, and that is a strong sensitivity to space. We are interested in not limiting the exhibition to the walls as the main support, but rather in thinking of space as an active element, capable of expanding exhibition possibilities and transforming the relationship between artwork, body, and perception.

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In both Marion’s and Sofia’s work, there is a very clear decision about how to occupy and transform space. Their works not only reconfigure the way we look, but also the way the bodies of those visiting the exhibition move, orient themselves, and relate to what surrounds them.

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In Marion’s exhibition, for example, the installation itself required visitors to bend down in order to move through the gallery, making the body a direct part of the experience of the work. In Sofia’s case, the displacement happens in a different way: she begins with objects and situations that seem familiar, but repositions them so that they no longer operate through their everyday meaning. This gesture creates a kind of estrangement: something recognizable takes on a different presence within the space and asks us to look at it again. We think this is where an important point of connection between both practices emerges: their ability to alter our perception through a very concrete transformation of space and of what we think we already know.

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For Barcelona, we have been thinking about how to translate these gestures and spatial operations. It is certainly a challenge, since booths have very defined formats and the fair itself operates according to fairly established logics. We did not want to fall into making an overly aestheticized booth, but rather to genuinely transfer something of these gestures and of the way space itself can also perform.

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In that sense, the solution is quite simple, but it introduces a very clear movement: we decided to build an industrial platform that raises the entire booth 40 cm above the floor. It is a minimal spatial reconfiguration that we feel resonates with our vision and with what we want to share.

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Perhaps, in order to see differently, it is enough to slightly shift the perspective. As always, we do not know exactly what will happen, and once again we enter the field of experimentation.

You are artists and curators: Roberto Rivadeneira, Aquiles Jarrín and Irving Ramó coordinate Ventana Project together, and in Roberto’s case, he is also the founder of Doble Erre, where his studio and the exhibition programme share the same space. How do your own artistic practices shape the way you build exhibitions for others?​

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We think this question is important because it touches, on the one hand, on the spirit of the project and, on the other, on one of its greatest challenges.

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The fact that all three of us are also creators makes us more aware and empathetic toward everything that it means to be on the artist’s side of an exhibition. It also means that our language with other artists often operates within a certain shared sensibility. There is a kind of constant encoding and decoding, and also a shifting of roles that continuously feeds back into the process from different positions.

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This enriches the experience a lot, especially on a human level, and we believe it has a direct effect on the exhibitions. It does not mean that we do not have our own vision, but it is a more porous one, not only with the artists we work with, but also among ourselves. We agree on many things, but we also have differences, and those differences are precisely what have prevented the project from becoming something flat.

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We are also friends, and that has required a certain degree of care in our relationship: learning how to navigate the affective and the professional at the same time. That care also extends to the people we work with. If there is something we value deeply about the project, it is the closeness it allows us to have with other artists and with the institutions we are gradually building relationships with.

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We have also noticed something more pendular: all the energy we put into the project comes back and affects our own practices in a positive way. Seeing other artists’ work up close, accompanying their processes, visiting their studios, and understanding how they produce also transforms the way we create and the way we relate to the art ecosystem.

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The challenge is how all of this affects our time, our own practices, and the other responsibilities we have. In that sense, we have learned to trust the process, the people we work with, and also the decisions each of us makes. There are undoubtedly tensions, but also a great deal of learning. Little by little, we are finding a rhythm that the three of us can sustain.

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In Roberto’s case, Doble Erre brings several of these layers together in a very concrete way. As he sees it, hybridity has a particular strength in the contemporary world, not only because it makes the dynamics of a space more active, diverse, and permeable, but also because it can operate on an ethical level: it shifts the emphasis away from the individual and opens up space for more collaborative ways of producing, living together, and thinking.

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Doble Erre is at once his studio, a workspace for other artists, and a place where part of Ventana’s programme takes place on a more permanent basis. Each of these dimensions retains its own specificity, but there is also a shared territory between them. For Roberto, this coexistence is not about erasing differences, but about allowing them to exist together and affect one another.