BARCELONA.- LOOP Fair has ended at the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas. From June 2 to 4, over 15 hours of runtime from 47 artist films and videos were screened, highlighting the increasing use of this medium by artists and its growing presence in museums, biennales and art galleries. This year was remarkable owing to the participation of galleries from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Israel, South Africa, China and Taiwan as well as the screening of 33 premieres: 13 world premieres, 6 European premieres, and 14 Spanish premieres.

The four collectors who make up the committee, Jean-Conrad and Isabelle Lemaître (Paris), Josée and Marc Gensollen (Marseille), Haro Cumbusyan (Collectorspace, Zurich) and Renee Drake (The Hague), have pointed out the high standard of quality and the variety of the submissions presented this year, which took up all available rooms for the first time. According to the president of the committee, Jean-Conrad Lemaître, the Fair has now achieved maturity, and he insists that LOOP is the place to present and showcase artists' works as well as to satisfy the demand of private collectors and institutions alike. LOOP Fair has become the place for video art lovers to meet and form bonds, a place where they can discover new artists and galleries. As always, the fair was attended by numerous representatives from institutions such as FRAC Marseille (France), CNAP Centre National des arts plastiques (France), Centre Pompidou (France), TATE (United Kingdom), WIELS Contemporary Art Center (Belgium), IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam (The Netherlands), LUX Artists' Moving Image (United Kingdom), CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Spain), MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (Spain), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain) or MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Spain), among others.

Among the 47 galleries attending the event, 19 did so for the first time, including highly relevant galleries such as Galería Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid), Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna) and Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art (Lisbon), which are involved in fairs on the international circuit, such as Art Basel, Frieze, ARCO or Art Brussels. As Juana de Aizpuru points out, the fact that video art is being edged out of conventional fairs owing to its peculiar characteristics, the existence of specialised fairs such as LOOP Fair is an absolute necessity. Alongside Ursula Krinzinger, from Galerie Krinzinger, they agree that its fundamental values are "the professionalism of its organisation, its capacity to draw in the sector and the closeness it establishes with the public concerned". Renato Silva from Mendes Wood DM (Brazil), who is participating for the first time, defines the fair as "a platform, not only to sell, but get in touch with people through video art". Moreover, after his first visit to the fair, Andrés Arredondo, from Galería Arredondo \ Arozarena (Mexico City) was pleasantly surprised by its commercial results as well as the ingenious solution of using hotel rooms as an exhibition format and the fact that the audience was highly knowledgeable about the medium. Miguel Ángel Sánchez, the director of ADN Galería, confirms that this has been the best LOOP Fair so far, having sold out the edition of the multi-channel video by young artist Adrian Melis. Among the submissions on display 60% were works produced over the course of the last year. Thus, as curator Paul-Emmanuel Odin points out, LOOP Fair "is the best place to get to know what is currently going on in the context of video art and to meet with its scene".

Banc de Sabadell has launched its own video art collection with the purchase of the work by Txuspo Poyo presented by Galería Vanguardia (Bilbao). Other significant private collections, such as Fundació Sorigué (Barcelona), Colección Amister (Barcelona), colección olorVISUAL (Barcelona) have also purchased works during this edition. Among the works acquired were those by artists Asian Gaisumov (KROMUS + ZINK, Berlin), Adrian Melis (ADN Galería, Barcelona), Julien Bismuth (Galerie Vallois, Paris), Daniel Monroy Cuevas (Arredondo \ Arozarena, Mexico City), Michael Linares (Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan) and Margaux Bricler (Michel Rein, Paris).

Over the course of the fair, the fourth edition of LOOP Studies also reaffirmed itself as the space for knowledge and debate. The LOOP Talks program has offered 7 conferences on the relationship between video art, art film and cinema, all of which were fully booked. The attending audience, with 250 professionals from the fields of art and film, had the chance to debate with renowned experts such as Erika Balsom, Raymond Bellour, Filipa César, Antje Ehmann, Malcolm Le Grice and Anthony McCall, among others, on "expanded film", "exhibition film" or "gallery film". LOOP Studies also organised 12 professional meetings (in camera in order to promote a working atmosphere) that drew in 150 agents from the sector. Throughout these meetings, subjects related to forms in which moving images are produced, circulated and consumed were debated, as well as the proposal for a contract model for the purchase of works of art in video format (The LOOP Protocol), an initiative by Screen Projects in collaboration with Enric Enrich, a lawyer specialising in copyright and intellectual property. The conclusions of these sessions will be published on the LOOP website shortly.