David García Torrado: Inner Architecture

A strange need to share thoughts is what drives me to create. Knowing yourself through your work becomes a healing ritual that serves as an incentive and justified requirement for personal balance.

David García Torrado (Oviedo, 1979) is a photographer whose work is gaining great personality. His images transfer us to worlds constructed by the artist where he transmits his feelings and deepest concerns, fiction and reality converge into a single narrative that invites us to reflect as spectators on the issues raised.

David began his relationship with photography from a young age as it was present in his immediate family environment, where he learnt it as a profession. It was years later when he began to understand it as a means of artistic expression. And until now has been moving toward what he considers essential: the search for an own language and personal imagery that gives coherence to his work.

The year 2009 marked a turning point in his career, when he moved to the German city of Munich in an attempt to find a different sense to the photography he had done so far. Dazzled by the city and its architecture, a new artistic phase is triggered in him, as is reflected in his later work.

David tells us that his work is in "no man's land", unable to be framed only in the field of photography. He considers it very close to painting, and among its artists of reference he cites William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Miguel Jacinto Meléndez or Jan van Eyck. Also the technique of Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf.

Something remarkable and characteristic about the work of David, which gives each piece its own sense is the rejection of traditional photographic media: the use of materials in his environment, such as wood or recycled paper, which become protagonists as part of the message he wants to convey. From the point of view of the creative process the trigger is a reality that he no longer adheres to, and that he shapes through his thoughts, fears and uncertainties, acquiring his photograph a compromised background and a testimony about the context he lives in.

The three galleries he currently exhibits at VirtualGallery show very well the path that his work has taken in search of aesthetic and conceptual coherence.

Thus, the gallery "Personal Notes", in a documentary way reveals the city of Munich through his eyes. They are very personal snapshots in black and white, which show those aspects of the city that have attracted his attention, and in which a budding interest in architecture is perceived, which we will see developed in his later works.

 

Steel Beauty, the next of its series, shows how his photography evolves relegating architecture from main character into the background, at the same time as human figure, nonexistent in his earlier works, increasingly takes weight. While these characters appear, his work gains more conceptualism, the artist raises concerns regarding issues such as climate change, capitalism or speculation, through dream worlds reminiscent of scenes from literature or science fiction movies. It is in those worlds where we are left to discover his deepest thoughts and the human figure appears as a survivor, or as salvation and hope of a catastrophic situation, which is identified with large commercial brands associated with human progress.

Also of particular interest is his portrait gallery Almas (Souls), a collection of assignments produced by the photographer in recent years. His relationship with this genre begins for economic reasons, which does not prevent us to also see reflected his personal stamp. In these pictures we see how he empathizes with those portrayed and can remind us the phrase "Troppo Vero" (too true), that pronounced Pope Inocencio X when Velázquez presented his portrait, the thing with David is that he does not end in the mere representation of reality but shows psychological traits, allowing us to know the people deeper. Somehow it seems that in every piece we step in front of a mirror that reflects our own image, and the portrayed sensations may be comparable to those we have all felt sometime.

Seeing the work of David García Torrado, is ultimately to enter a mysterious and evocative world. His galleries in VirtualGallery are a great way to meet his work and guided by the artist, and understand the entire universe of his work.

Nati Guil Grund, Comisaria Jefa en VirtualGallery.