INFORMACIÓN Friday, August 11, 2006 CULTURE 59

TRIBUNA Text by MANUEL PARRA POZUELO — LOS DESTELLOS DE LA UTOPIA

After thirty years of navigating the stormy seas of geometries capable of being multiplied to infinity—thanks to chromatic combinations and digitalization processes—ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES (b. 1949 Elche, Alicante) has arrived at the island that Thomas More baptized with the name of Utopia.

Her arrival has been made possible by her intense and innovative study of space, plane, line, and color, in an ascetic, continuous, and coherent process. By following Ariadne's thread, she has managed to escape the labyrinth of reality and settle into the image of the purest and most uncontaminated painting at the goal of digital art. Here, space and line reveal a new expression of their powerful potential, in a place where chaotic living acquires a rational and balanced dimension. Such is the scope and atmosphere achieved by Iluminada García-Torres in the works currently on display at the Territorial College of Architects of Alicante, in Plaza Gabriel Miró, until September 7th, following the mandatory break for the August holidays.

The extensive career of Iluminada García-Torres began in the strictest and most absolute realism at the hands of her never-forgotten master, Antonio López, in the Madrid of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts during the 1960s. She later embarked on her most personal path with an abstract stage she called "Ariadne's Thread," which she also subtitled, in its pictorial version, "Continuous Spatial Layout." These square structures, in which geometric lines and spaces of diverse and combined colors appear, provide an exact idea of that music which underlies the deepest and most authentic dreams and sensations.

These works—also featured at the Lonja del Pescado in Alicante in her exhibition "Ariadne’s Thread: Painting 1991–2002"—alongside the sculpture titled "Combinables" (a spatial articulation of flat forms, curves, and voids integrating the developments of the cube and cylinder, based on the study of spatial geometry), are the fruit of her capacity for concentration, synthesis, perseverance, and subtlety. We are speaking of an artistic stage that was already presented in Alicante in 1993 under the sponsorship of the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, showcasing an equally harmonious relationship between the strictest geometry and mathematical order on one hand, and poetic reason and the human heartbeat on the other.

It is worth noting that in 1996, ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES received the "Carlos Haes" Painting Prize, awarded in Madrid by the College of Civil Engineers. She was also selected for the Villa de Madrid Painting and Sculpture Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as the L'Oréal Painting Prize in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001, and 2002, leading to the exhibition of her works at the Conde Duque Cultural Center in Madrid.ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES stands at the goal of digital art, where space and line reveal a new expression of their potential.

In 1997, during her stay in London, ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES was invited by Gasworks Studios, and in 2000, she exhibited at the Hortensia Art Gallery of Kensington & Chelsea College in London. Upon her return to Spain, she displayed her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Elche, the same city where, in 2002, she installed her sculpture "Combinables: Energy Axis" in the Plaza de San Juan.

In her canvases—born from her fascination with the "SLEEPING ARIADNE" sculpture, which she observed and painted in two oil works (1986-87) at the PRADO MUSEUM—she was able to build a geometric and mathematical cosmos. She reached that non-existent yet essential place where one attains the beatific harmony denied to us by the mundanity of reality. Through the union of rational poetics and expressive gesture, Iluminada García-Torres has captured a dimension in her digital art canvases that brings color to every room of the Hotel Hospes Amérigo, proving its perfect compatibility with the spaces of this emblematic 21st-century building in our city.

In her search for Utopia, Iluminada García-Torres also turns toward herself through her lines, pixels, and colors. In doing so, she ensures the abstraction of her painting is not only geometric and logical substance, but also—and above all—a human heartbeat and poetic vibration. Much like the voyage to Ithaca, the journey itself is as important, if not more so, than the final destination. She knows that the process toward an ever-unreachable (yet undeniable) goal generates those flashes—that transition toward the singular emotion of the essential. The public now has the opportunity to witness this in the exhibition of ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES's work titled "Ariadne’s Thread: Utopia in Progress," featuring her latest geometric research and essential inquiries into the field of new technologies, presented by the Territorial College of Architects of Alicante. CTAA.

Text by MANUEL PARRA POZUELO, 2006
Exhibition by ILUMINADA GARCÍA-TORRES at the Territorial College of Architects of Alicante