2B

To be or not to be: an essential question for both Hamlet and the characters portrayed by Andrés Torres, always in 2B graphite pencil, in the 2019 fanzine of the same name, presented at the last edition of ArtsLibris Madrid. The nihilism implicit in this approach is more alive than ever, four centuries later, in the 28 drawings in which the artist brings to life the peculiar outsiders of contemporary society. In this exhibition at the RocioSantaCruz gallery, part of the ArtsLibris calendar of exhibitions, Andrés Torres brings to life an individual imaginary full of questions about the experience of living. An experience in which each of the protagonists, taken from a kind of outdated Disney world, as the author himself defines it, responds to a reality of its own. The psychological analysis of each character, isolated in a kind of botanical notebook that tries to study those who exist only in Torres’s mind (and now in the minds of those who think about them), tries to understand their forms and essential aspects. Vulnerable characters, proud, amused or tormented, too serious or too happy, who give us a glimpse of an intimate subconscious, tormented by a society that often simply does not allow them to be. 420 years after William Shakespeare wrote his often paraphrased To Be or Not to Be, the question is no longer whether or not to continue to be, but how to survive in a postmodern world where everything is seen and everything is to be seen; everything has been and everything is to be.”