CARLOS AIRES

Although inspired by personal experiences and obsessions, he pays special attention to the shock effect produced by contradictory and/or absurd truths that make up the conceptual fabric of our everyday fictions. He gives a semantic twist to the icons and values established by society; he re-contextualises objects, raw materials and traditions that he extracts from the great detritus of contemporary culture (vinyl records, banknotes, crockery, knives, sculptures, archive photographs, etc.); he uses the trompe l'oeil technique as a strategy to dazzle the viewer and play with his or her imaginary. His deeply conceptual work can be understood as a detailed reflection on the emerging dynamics of contemporary global culture.

After graduating in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, he furthered his training abroad, mainly in Holland, Belgium and New York, where he was quickly recognised as one of the contemporary artists with the greatest international projection. After fourteen years he returned to Spain in 2009 and set up his studio in Madrid, where he has recently promoted the Mala Fama project. He has received important awards such as Generation 2008 from Caja Madrid, and the Pont Museum Prize in Holland. He is also the first Spanish artist to receive one of the most important national awards in Belgium: Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge in 2005.

He has participated in numerous exhibitions in national and international institutions, such as: Le Delta (Namur), CAC (Málaga), MACBA (Barcelona), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Imperial Belvedere Palace (Vienna), Maison Particulière Art Centre (Brussels), BB6 Bucharest International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Bucharest), 5^th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City), Pabellón de L'Exile (Paris), Palazzo Riso-Arte Contemporaneo Museum of Palermo (Sicily), De Bond Museum (Brugge), Museum of Contemporary Art Canada (Montreal), among others.

His work can be found in important public collections, among them: CAAC (Spain), Banco de España (Spain), ARTIUM (Spain), MACBA (Spain), Fondation Francès (France), ARTER (Turkey), CAC (Spain), Maison Particulière (Belgium), Museum Biedermann (Germany), Progress Art, (Saudi Arabia), Caja Madrid Collection (Spain), National Belgium Bank (Belgium), 21c Museum (USA), MAK (Austria), MAK (Austria), MAK (Austria), MAK (Germany), MAK (Austria), MAK (Austria). USA), MAK (Austria, Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), Space Collection (Belgium), CA2M (Spain), Les Abattoirs-FRAC Occitanie (France), Benetton Foundation (Italy).

Text courtesy Sabrina Amrani.