Marcos Torres

Marcos Torres is a Spanish graphic artist whose visual narrative is dominated by the cult of colour and visual impact. His work is characterised by a strong connection with music iconography, movies, and Pop and Rock and Roll mythology. Marcos has developed all of his graphic production through screen printing, and works side by side with printers, adding the printing work to the creative process.

Marcos’ artistic education began when he was 15 years old, when he entered the artistic baccalaureate in Ibiza for four years. He then moved to Valencia to specialise in graphic design. In the meantime, and after going through different advertising agencies and design studios, Marcos began to design and sell collections of screen printed t-shirts, the success of which allowed him to quit his job as a graphic designer and dedicate his time exclusively to their printing. From there, he made the transition to artistic screen printing, exhibitions, and the production and sale of artistic screen prints.

“I try to make my influences act in the most unconscious way possible, to be able to create in the most free and direct way what I am passionate about” says Marcos. The first of his passions, and which therefore has a strong influence on his work, is music. Not only is there a strong musical link in his work, there is also the world of cinema, pop iconography of the 60s and 70s, pulp comics, and television.

“There is obviously a passion for the aesthetic glorification of pop icons, but I try not to base my work exclusively on it, and I also like to represent them in a different context or give them a different role. I love to play with that. I like to see most of my designs as frames of an imaginary movie, and that the interesting thing for me is to invite the viewer to imagine the rest of the story. All this is at a conceptual level and about the inspirations of the content of my work.”

In regards to his graphic style, Marcos describes this as “something that has taken shape on its own”, and that he can only attribute to his training in graphic design and advertising illustration at a professional level. His work also hints to the posters of the early Soviet masters and their geometric movements and bands of colour that generate various optical effects. He comments; “The power of geometric rays of light, and these kinetic games (very close to Op Art) have been a constant influence”. Marcos is also a “huge fan” of the epic pop-style from comic book masters like Jim Steranko and Guy Peellaert. Considering his absolute passion for the powerful graphic style of the psychedelic posters of the 60s, it is very likely that there is also influence from artists like the one and only Victor Moscoso, among others.

Normally the scenes or the protagonists of Marcos’ works appear in his head and then take shape sometimes quickly and naturally, and sometimes in a more complex and prolonged way. The process is never the same. Sometimes it begins with a sketch by hand that becomes real by shaping it little by little, and sometimes it begins with a photograph, or parts of them, combined, which end up being drawn on a computer or tablet. In any case, sooner or later they end up taking shape by being drawn in a vector format with the computer, regardless of whether their origin is made by hand.

“I always knew that my work was made to be screenprinted. The thematic direction of the designs, the masses of colour, the optic and geometrical games, the previous reference of my pop art heroes…,” says Marcos. Twenty years ago he travelled to Barcelona obsessed with finding someone who could guide him with reproducing his designs through screen printing. His guide turned out to be Josep Tobella, (former president of FESPA, a global federation of national Associations for the screen printing), who then introduced him to Ramón Sayans, “an elegant, incredibly kind man, an industry legend, and one of the pioneers of screen printing in Spain”. With Ramon and his team, Marcos made the vast majority of his screen prints. However, he has also recently started collaborating with Dolly Demoratti from Mother Drucker Berlin.

“From the first time I stepped foot in a screen print workshop, I fell in love with the technique, the process, the smells, the colours, and working side by side with the printers. I think of it as part of the creative process, and probably the most exciting part of all. The fact that the pints are done slowly, colour by colour, and until the end you don’t see the complete design, gives the process an exceptional emotion, to say the least.”

Marcos is currently organising an exhibition that showcases a selection of his designs that he has made on t-shirts. This exhibition takes screen printing on a t-shirt out of the context of “fashion” and into the art gallery, reflecting on why screen printing on garments is considered fashion, and screen printing the same on paper is considered art. He is also planning on reimagining some of his prints as large-format three-dimensional works made from vinyl, wood, and neon lights.

www.marcostorres.com
@marcostorresart

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