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Javier Torras Casas is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores space and form through painting and sculpture. His investigations evolve around the symbolism contained in physicality, emotions, and mindfulness. Javier uses shapes, forms and colours to build connexions to the spaces he lives and works in, transcending them through spiritually and culturally inherited values.
Javier’s paintings present suggestive images evoking nature in which the viewer is invited to let the eyes and mind determine what they see, the forms visible in his works seem to be in motion, they are in constant potential to become something new in the human mind. The paintings focus on different aspects bringing techniques and processes in close relation to the symbolic meaning of the elements, colours and shapes seen in them.
Torras’ paintings are inspired by his direct observations and experience of nature, posing questions such as ‘what do we, humans, want the landscape to look like?’ The age of the Anthropocene has made the natural landscape dependant on human action, an action that is born in the determination and vision of individuals. ‘What is the future going to look like? What do humans read in the signs given by nature? How are humans interpreting those and how are those signs determining their actions?’
Javier’s paintings and sculptures portray imagined narratives that shift between abstraction and figuration. He uses clay, wax and plaster to create sculptural responses to space, allowing him to interact with found objects that hold a special meaning for him in relation to specific sites and memories. The term gravitational forces summarises the expressiveness contained in his subject matter. The methodology used in Javier’s work is based on vivid evocations of motion through immediate spontaneous actions, whereby autonomous physical phenomena are balanced with a degree of mindful control over a series of artistic processes.
Building connections between nature and man-made objects come across as a common feature in his artworks, most recently expressed in his outdoor sculptures, creating visual references in the landscape as well as generating connections with their surroundings. Javier’s outdoors sculptures create unexpected encounters between humans and the landscape through a sensorial call to peer out and feel them through their physicality.
b. Barcelona 1990
MRes Fine Art - Royal College of Art, London, UK
MA Painting - (UAL) University of the Arts London, Wimbledon College, UK
BA Art History - (UB) Universitat de Barcelona, ES / Universita degli Studi Roma Tre, IT
2022 Gabriele Risso and Javier Torras, Netherhall House Auditorium, London, UK
2020 The Invitational I, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK
2019 Making Public, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2019 Editions Exhibition, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK
2019 Decreto 349, Charlie Smith London, UK
2019 Reachers, Blyth Gallery, London, UK
2019 WIP Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2018 Summer Show, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK
2018 Radical Residency, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK
2017 Leftovers, Prenzlauer Studio Space, Berlin, DE
2017 Young Gods, Charlie Smith London, UK
2017 Practices of Enquiry, UAL Showroom, 272 High Holborn, London, UK
2016 Practices of Enquiry, Cookhouse Gallery, Chelsea College, London, UK
2016 MA Summer Show, Wimbledon College of Art, London , UK
2016 About Space, Lewisham Arthouse, London, UK
2015 At it...!, Wimbledon College of Art, Painting studios, London, UK
2021 High House Working Residency, Norfolk, UK
2018 Radical Residency, Unit 1 Gallery| Workshop, London, UK
2018 Hold Residency, Scan 2018, Online
2022 Light Intensity in the Sky, Elephant Lab, UK
2021 Approaching Art through the Lenses of an Artist: Observing, Sensing and Understanding - Catholic University of Croatia, HR
2018 Making Connections - V&A (Organisational team), UK
2016 Fluid Lines and Moving Marks: A Dance Drawing Workshop - UAL: Chelsea College (Speaker and Lecturer Assistant), UK
2023 Blanco Gallery, Javier Torras
2022 Elephant Magazine, ‘Javier Torras’s Teasing Print Poses Endless Questions’
2018 Diari de Sabadell, 'L'home que fa art amb el llegat industrial'
2017 FOCI Magazine, Shaping and Reshaping
2017 Creative Boom, Javier Torras Casas crafts incredible replicas of human bodies and bones out of clay
2017 Material Driven, The Mutation of Material
2016 Young Space, Javier Torras Casas
2016 Wimbledon College of Arts, Interview with Sophie Kassay
2016 Scandale Project, Javier Torras Casas
2018 Art Grant, Institut Ramon Llull
2016 Human Gestures
2016 Towards the Origins
2016 Seeking the possibility of the impossible