Julián Jaramillo Torres

Julián Jaramillo Torres began his artistic studies at the mere age of 13. In 1986, he moved to Paris to study at the École National Supérieur des Beaux-Arts and at the studio of the French painter François Chatenay. In 1997, he continued his artistic journey in Italy at the State Institute d’Arte di Forlì. After a brief time back in Paris as an artistic consultant for American retail company GAP, he continued his studies in Milan in 2003 with a Fine Arts BA at the Brera Academy, an institution with which he has continued to collaborate on a variety of projects.

The work of Jaramillo Torres consists of impactful images with an engraving-like quality. His pieces showcase the artist's fascination with the everyday objects that surround us and the essential role they have come to play in our lives, especially during a pandemic.

A pivotal moment in his journey as an artist was when he discovered the verb "abrade". "Abrading", put simply, is the art of "removing". An art that not only requires a certain technical expertise but is above all an existential path. The artist describes his procedure as follows:

Starting from the soft and smooth surface, which I identify as the principle of culture while digging I found a way to bring to light questions and solutions that give meaning to the subtle thread of memory that holds all the pieces of a person's experience together.

Torres' process is both simple and complex: he starts with the green paper used for advertising posters and tries to find the image by scratching the surface. This technique is much like an excavation: it's an act of "bringing out" and of taking away, rather than an act of creation; it is a process of discovery.

The artist currently lives and works in Milan, Italy.