Ampparito Brings the Streets of Madrid Indoors

Words by Gabriella Koppelman

From the street, the art space of SOLO CSV is easy to miss. You either know what you’re looking for, or you notice the front door on Cuesta de San Vicente and get curious enough to peek in. Inside, the space opens up: natural light and room after room unfolding like a labyrinth.

The center occupies a former printing factory, part of SOLO, the art project founded by Spanish entrepreneurs Ana Gervás and David Cantolla. It feels like a film set: each room unfolds with a different scene. The placement of every artwork, book, and plant feels considered in the space. Alongside exhibitions and site-specific installations, SOLO CSV is home to Bowman Hal, its gallery, which runs an annual program of national and international artists.

Bowman Hal was the first project to open at SOLO CSV, in July 2025, and the center has been revealing itself and the space ever since. Ampparito‘s show opens the gallery’s second season, running through November 21, 2026. For the opening, the team paired it with an artist talk that drew a crowd of 400, and people of all ages. “We want SOLO CSV to be a place that people enjoy discovering, somewhere they can return to and always encounter something different,” says Oscar Hormigos, director of SOLO. A show that makes every visitor part of the work fits right in.

After an espresso at the food truck by the entrance, we went inside and met Ampparito, the Madrid-born artist. This is his first solo show at Bowman Hal, a “conceptual trompe l’œil.” Walk in and the walls are blank. This is intentional. Ampparito’s work has a clear meaning, so his approach to not using the walls in the space was a statement within itself.

Instead, his motivation in creating work is to have people stop and think about what the work is saying. The work is everywhere else: 475 granite slabs depicting injured pigeons line the skirting board, photographs of headless equestrian statues hang from the ceiling, and replicas of Madrid weathervanes turn as you walk past. Blow on them or wave your arms and they move with the breeze you make. The viewer experiences the weathervanes turning as they would naturally by the wind. As he puts it, “the work is not the object itself, but what happens in the space.”

Over lunch in the greenhouse-like structure made of glass within the space, Ampparito speaks with me about how the show came together in around six weeks.

The show is titled ‘uːː ɡʊɾːuː uːː ɡʊɾːuː,’ a phonetic transcription of a pigeon’s coo. Have you always had a soft spot for pigeons?
Yes. Pigeons are probably one of the only things in a city without a purpose. They’re just there. A few hundred years ago we controlled them and used them for something. Now they don’t pay taxes, they’re a bit stinky, and I like that they’re the most free, even if they live in a miserable way. We plant trees and decide where they go. You try to control pigeons, but you can’t. There’s a joke in Madrid: we put up with living badly because we have access to so much culture. I think pigeons are the same. They live badly, but they have access to it.

“To come up with something you need to be bored, and this is my way of being bored.”

Where do your ideas usually start?
I walk a lot. I work intensely for a period, then take a few months off, so instead of taking the train, I walk. Sometimes I see someone screaming or doing something weird, sometimes nothing. To come up with something you need to be bored, and this is my way of being bored. I don’t have expectations. Instead of making plans and feeling bad when they don’t happen, I’m always surprised. And I try to be kind.

You’ve built a career mostly outside galleries, in public space in cities across Europe. What was the biggest challenge of bringing that into Bowman Hal?
It was painful at the beginning. The show was supposed to open in June, and I had two other projects going. With a month and a half left, Mun-Jung (the show curator) told me we could move it to September. Showing in this space in Madrid felt like a big responsibility, and I didn’t want to disappoint. So, I started from a project I began three years ago: I’d ride out on my bike with mirrors and angle them at the sun so the reflected light blocked out the faces of statues. Everything is based on time. You adapt to the time you have. In three years, I’ll probably say I should have done something else.

You built the weathervanes yourself. How did you learn that so quickly?
I wasn’t going to pay someone else to do it. I had the idea in July, and August in Spain is holiday, so I had to do it myself, super quick. I learned to work with a laser, which I’d never done in my life. It’s like speaking English when it’s not your language.

SOLO CSV
Cuesta de San Vicente n.o 36
28008, Madrid
Spain