Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in A Study in Scarlet (1887): “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”And something like that is what Marcos Torres (Ibiza, 1973) has been doing ever since the late eighties when design was a chimera in our country; adding lots of colour and drawing sinuous curves on what is at times the “colourless skein of life”. First by stamping his designs (always pop)—that aesthetic that never seems to fade away with the passage of time—in the most popular formats there could be: T-shirts, album covers, book covers, film credits…He went on to doing silkscreen printing and quickly made the leap to art galleries. Ibiza, Mallorca, Madrid, Santiago, Castellón, León, Brighton, London, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Copenhagen have all hosted the ‘made in Torres’ explosion of colour and even the prestigious, austere Christie’s has seen fit to auction one of his works. Works which, incidentally, rub shoulders on the walls of the galleries with the works of Banksy, Dface, Shepard Fairey or Blek Le Rat, as if nothing had happened.
Screen-printing seemed to be the natural environment in which Marcos’ overflowing imagination could demonstrate all its power and this is confirmed by his new releases printed in Berlin: “Go!”, “Psychedelic dreams” and “Cherry Bomb”; works that, the first time the artist looked at them, caused him to burst out laughing. “A result of feeling nervous”, the artist points out, “I hadn’t received a slap of colour in the face like that up until now”. However, like a good Jedi, Marcos was neither able nor willing to stay alone—and that ‘alone’ possesses more irony than all the United Kingdom put together—in the precise art of screen printing. As Master Yoda–that tiny being who should have founded his own religion for the sake of humanity and who Mark regards as one of his unquestioned ideological gurus says: “Do it or don’t do it, but don’t try it”. So says the intrepid artist who, in one of the latest examples of his spectacular screen prints—that sensation that tends to occur after giving birth, one of relief and satisfaction—did not quite get there, or at least did so in a diminished way, somewhat deaf. Something more was needed and that something more was to go over to a three dimensional format! Let the works come to life, full of light and relief. Let them acquire body and volume. No sooner said than done. The Smiths’ slogan, “Hang the DJ”, that Marcos had previously made his own, became flesh. LEDs, an aluminium case, a rope in lacquered wood, vinyl, neon…“Enjoy!” says the artist. “The process, marvellous, orgasmic. The result, spectacular. All those who come to my studio without expecting it and see it lit up, there on the wall, end up with their eyes as wide open as plates… (laughs)”. And this is just the beginning, one more in Marcos’ long career. We’ll see what new adventures await…
