Biography an artist statement

José Luis Torres was born in Argentina and has been based in Quebec (Canada) since 2003. An interdisciplinary artist with a unique background, he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts, a Master’s degree in Sculpture, and advanced training in both architecture and the integration of art into architecture. This dual expertise drives a rigorous practice where the sculptural gesture engages in an intimate dialogue with the structures of inhabited spaces, leading his work to be showcased by leading institutions across the Americas and Europe, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Koffler Gallery in Toronto, and the Remai Modern.

 

His current work unfolds through major public art commissions and international artist residencies, leaving a significant mark on the contemporary art scene with monumental site-specific projects. Spanning both ephemeral and permanent structures, his practice stands out today as an essential reference in transitory architecture and environmental art, as demonstrated by his immersive installation HANDMADE at the Kelowna Art Gallery, the urban intervention DECONSTRUCTION in Ontario, and the monumental SHELTER PAVILION created for the OpenArt International Biennale in Örebro, Sweden.

 

Core Concept: The Architecture of Precarious Utopia

 

My artistic practice operates at the intersection of monumental sculpture, ephemeral architecture, and site-specific intervention. In a world defined by accelerating migratory, ecological, and identity crises, I approach public space as a laboratory for permanent transition. I define my current positioning through the development of an Architecture of Precarious Utopia (A.P.U.).

 

My installations do not aim to build static monuments, but rather to erect mental and physical shelters from the debris of our material culture. By obsessively accumulating obsolete domestic objects (chairs, windows, doors) or raw construction materials (salvaged lumber, scaffolding), I am not merely recycling: I am engaging in a process of memory recodification. Each chosen element acts as an archive of daily life and a silent witness to displacement.

 

This practice deliberately borrows from the constructive grammar of vernacular architecture and makeshift shelters. Where traditional urban perspectives see only chaos or destitution, I discern a genius for adaptation and a pure form of resilience. Building with whatever is at hand, assembling disparate fragments to erect a space for survival, is a universal human gesture. By transposing the syntax of the transit zone into museum and urban settings through color-saturated compositions, I transfigure this sense of urgency into poetics.

 

My approach thus unfolds across a dual temporality, wherein the act of assembly remains the guiding thread:

 

• My ephemeral interventions embody the cycle of urgency. By using modest, salvaged materials, I give physical form to vulnerability, creating transitory structures that accept their own eventual disappearance.

 

• My permanent public art pieces translate this very concept into the cycle of anchoring. When working with durable materials such as steel or aluminum, precariousness shifts from the material to the form itself. My monumental structures capture and immortalize a state of suspended balance, a momentum, or a dynamic stacking that challenges the rigidity of host institutions. The utopia then becomes civic: the assembly of heterogeneous shapes becomes a monumental metaphor for cultural hybridity, the convergence of diversities, and the resilience of a community.

 

My interventions deploy themselves parasitically, creating a deliberate friction with the host architecture. By disrupting the geometry and usual flow of these sites, my structures force a phenomenological experience: the passerby is transformed into a temporary inhabitant, physically confronted with instability, the search for bearings, and the poetics of exile.

 

Deeply rooted in my own migratory journey, my work places alterity at the core of its process. The raw, visible assembly of heterogeneous materials becomes a plastic metaphor for cultural hybridity and the reconstruction of the self. My structures claim their vulnerability and transitoriness as acts of resistance, reminding us that the act of inhabiting the world is a constant poetic and political negotiation.