Cósmica Galería: The Madrid Gallery Making Space for Queer Desire and Tenderness

Cósmica Galería is a young, independent gallery in Madrid built entirely around queer contemporary art, using photography and limited-edition prints to explore desire, intimacy, masculinity and the body. Founded in 2020 by gallery director Roberto Nogales Cuéllar, it works across both physical and digital formats, meaning its curated editions are just as reachable from Brussels as from Madrid. For queer audiences looking for art that treats intimacy and tenderness as worthy subjects in their own right, Cósmica is a gallery worth following, wherever you happen to be scrolling from.

A gallery built for queer contemporary art

Cósmica describes itself plainly as an independent contemporary gallery dedicated to presenting queer contemporary art. Through curated exhibitions, artist representation and original editions, it champions emerging and established artists whose practices explore identity, intimacy, desire and contemporary expressions of masculinity.

Founder Roberto Nogales Cuéllar has been running the project since April 2020, curating queer art and photography from what he calls “an emerging gallery platform based in Madrid”. The team has since grown, with Lucia Nogales Cuellar joining as Head of Brand & Growth at the start of 2026 — a sign of a gallery that’s still very much building momentum.

Desire, masculinity and the body, through a lens

The gallery’s identity is anchored in its editorial series, #CÓSMICACURATES, which continuously highlights artists and practices that inspire the gallery, centred on desire, masculinity, intimacy and the body. Rather than treating these themes abstractly, Cósmica leans into photography as a medium especially suited to capturing them: intimate, direct, and unafraid of vulnerability.

Its featured artists include Stefan Mogolyanov and Reid Calvert. One current highlight is Mogolyanov’s 2025 work “Doi,” described by the gallery as a quiet study of intimacy, desire and public tenderness, photographed against the backdrop of a monumental historical fresco. The piece is available as a limited-edition A3 print, with only 15 copies produced.

Why this kind of representation matters

Public tenderness between queer people is still, in a lot of places and a lot of images, treated as something to hide or soften. A gallery that puts that exact tenderness — displayed openly, deliberately, against grand historical backdrops — at the centre of its programme is doing something quietly significant: insisting that queer intimacy deserves the same visual weight and seriousness as any other subject in contemporary art history.

That matters just as much for a Brussels audience as a Madrid one. Queer art doesn’t need to be geographically local to be relevant; a gallery like Cósmica, working digitally and shipping limited editions internationally, extends the reach of queer visual culture well beyond its home city, into the collections and feeds of LGBTQIA+ art lovers everywhere.

Practical information

Cósmica Galería is based in Madrid, Spain, and operates across both physical and digital formats, including curated original editions and limited-edition prints such as Stefan Mogolyanov’s “Doi” (2025, A3, edition of 15). The gallery can be followed via its website and its Instagram and other social channels for updates on new artists, editions and exhibitions.

A small, independent gallery with a clear point of view — Cósmica is proof that queer contemporary art doesn’t need a huge space to make a lasting impression.