Carlos Arriaga has built his career on the tension and dialogue between two disciplines: photography and painting. From the very beginning, light, architecture and atmosphere have been at the centre of his work, whether behind the camera or in front of the canvas.

As a young photographer he immersed himself in the visual culture of Madrid and New York, learning to read the city through framing, contrast and rhythm. Over the years, this photographic eye evolved into a pictorial language where streets, skylines and interiors become silent stages for stories about time, memory and our changing relationship with nature.

A decisive moment in his trajectory came in 2015, when Arriaga began painting directly in oil over black and white photographs. In this process, the photograph is not just reference material; it is the physical base of the painting. Light, perspective and structure come from the image, while colour, gesture and atmosphere are built through successive translucent layers of paint.

This hybrid technique united his two passions in a single surface. The result is a luminous, volumetric image where every building, tree or cloud participates in a carefully balanced composition, inviting the viewer to look again and discover what lies between reality and imagination.

1981 – Begins working as a professional photographer, collaborating with major advertising agencies and leading fashion and general-interest magazines in Spain. flecha.es

1985–1993 – Participates in collective photography exhibitions at the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid through the Spanish Association of Fashion and Advertising Photographers. flecha.es

1994 – Works as director of photography on the documentary short film Verano en la Universidad, which receives a Goya award in its category. flecha.es

From 1995 – Takes part in his first collective painting exhibition in New York and continues exhibiting in galleries in Madrid, Málaga, London and other cities, consolidating his presence in contemporary art fairs. flecha.es

2015 – Consolidates his current technique of oil painting over black and white photography, bringing together decades of experience in both mediums. art-madrid.com

2020s – Develops series that explore the fragile relationship between city and nature, often starting from AI-generated photographs that are then transformed through grisaille and glazes into complex, atmospheric paintings.

Today, Carlos Arriaga’s work focuses on the tension between urban landscapes and the quiet persistence of nature. Skies, rivers, trees and animals appear in dialogue with bridges, theatres, towers and industrial structures, suggesting that the atmosphere itself carries memory and warning.

Many recent series begin with AI-generated photographs, used as a lens to imagine new places or revisit familiar cities from another angle. These images are then transformed through grisaille, glazes and pencil work into paintings that feel both photographic and painterly, both documentary and dreamlike.

Across all these stages, one thread remains constant: art as a way to reflect on a world in transformation, and to invite viewers to pause, look and feel before it is too late.

In the 1990s, photography was not just a profession for Carlos Arriaga, it was his first artistic language. Through assignments and personal work he learned to read cities like scores: light, geometry and rhythm became a way to understand the world rather than just record it.

These early photographs already contain the seeds of what would come later: an attraction to architecture, skies and empty spaces, and a desire to turn everyday scenes into something almost cinematic. Long before he began painting over images, the camera was his tool for composing atmospheres and suggesting stories in a single frame.

Looking back, these images are both documents and anticipations. They show the world as it was, but also hint at the transformations and environmental questions that would gradually become central in his later work.

In the Street Posters Collages series, the city is literally the raw material of the portrait. Fragments of cinema posters, concert flyers and advertising torn from the streets of Madrid become skin, clothing and background.

These works mark a moment when my practice moved closer to urban pop expressionism:

• I collect layers of printed paper directly from walls and billboards.

• I reconstruct faces, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Marilyn, anonymous dancers and passers-by, using only this found material.

• In some pieces, oil paint appears on top of the collage, adding volume, shadow and a new emotional temperature.

The result is a portrait that is never neutral. Each face carries within it the noise of the city: typography, colours, movie titles, traces of concerts that have already happened. Underneath the image there is a palimpsest of urban life, a memory of nights out, cultural events and streets that never completely sleep.

Looking at these works from today’s perspective, you can read them as a bridge between my photographic eye, my interest in popular culture and my later explorations where city and image are constantly reassembled and reinterpreted.

With Retratos Impertinenetes I wanted to play with the idea of the portrait as something slightly disrespectful, a bit insolent, never completely serious. These works take universal characters, icons from cinema, music, culture, and twist them just enough to make them feel both familiar and strange.

In pieces like Postmodernos or MarilinDuchamp, the image becomes a conversation between eras: classic beauty, pop culture, and the irony of seeing the same face repeated endlessly in media and advertising. The portrait stops being a “faithful representation” and becomes a commentary on how images are consumed today.

There is also room for self-reflection. In works such as James y Yo, I explore the idea of the self-portrait through another person, merging my own identity with that of James Dean. The result is a hybrid figure, halfway between myth and autobiography, that asks a simple question: how much of what we are is built from the images we admire?

These “impertinent” portraits opened the door to a more playful, conceptual way of working with figures, a path that will later reappear in my digitally painted photography and my painted photographs of cities under transmuted skies.

The exhibition “Caos Urbano” (Urban Chaos), held in 1998, was a turning point in my relationship with the city. Here, highways, traffic jams, construction sites and industrial materials appear not just as background, but as central protagonists of the image.

Everyday objects, clothes pegs, kitchen tools, paintbrushes, nails, become metaphors. In works like Atasco, Nudo de Autopistas or Colisión, the city is pictured as a complex, sometimes absurd mechanism:

• A traffic jam turns into a dense tapestry of light, cars and anxiety.

• A bundle of highways looks like a knot that no one knows how to undo.

• A simple kitchen peg stands in for a car crash, compressing drama into the smallest possible symbol.

This series allowed me to explore the idea that urban space is not neutral. It accumulates tension, speed, collisions, endless works in progress. Using strong composition and a mixture of painting and sculptural elements, I tried to show the city as we experience it: sometimes exciting, sometimes overwhelming, always in motion.

Seen from today, “Caos Urbano” anticipates many of my current concerns: the impact of industry, the legacy of infrastructure, and the way architecture and traffic reveal the hidden cost of progress.

Otros Realismos (Other Realisms) gathers works that, at first glance, might seem simply “realist”: city corners, neon signs, hotel facades, small still lifes. But the intention is not to copy reality; it is to reframe it.

In paintings like Schweppes, China Contrast or Hotel Málaga Palacio, the familiar becomes slightly cinematic. A building in Madrid, a sign in a foreign city or a flower in a vase are treated as if they were movie scenes, carefully lit, tightly framed, suspended in time.

This collection shows several threads that run through my work:

• A fascination with urban symbols: billboards, crossroads, hotel facades.

• The desire to slow down the gaze, giving weight to scenes we usually pass in a second.

• The search for a poetic realism, where the image is faithful to the world but also charged with atmosphere and emotion.

“Otros Realismos” can be read as a laboratory of styles and approaches, a place where many later ideas appear for the first time, before being fully developed in subsequent series.

In Agua, water is more than a subject; it is a way of talking about time, reflection and intimacy. Surfaces of pools, fountains and reflections become mirrors where light, architecture and memory overlap.

Some pieces are deeply personal, like India en la Piscina, where my daughter appears immersed in the quiet of a summer afternoon. Others, such as Movimiento Acuoso or Claro Como el Agua, focus on the abstract movement of colour on the surface, turning ripples into calligraphy.

In this collection I am especially interested in:

• How water breaks and recomposes the image of the world.

• How the same scene can feel peaceful or restless depending on the intensity of the light and the movement.

• How painting can capture not just the appearance of water, but its rhythm, the way it never stops changing.

Agua connects with later work where skies, atmospheres and rivers play a central role. It is an early exploration of something that will become essential: the fragile balance between human presence and the natural elements that surround it.

The series Óleos sobre cartulina recortada explores another scale and another support. Instead of large canvases, these works are painted on cut cardboard, a more fragile, direct and intimate material.

The format invites spontaneity. Portraits like Lucía y Roberto, urban scenes such as New York First Sight or more narrative pieces like After The Party are all compressed into a smaller surface where gesture has to be precise and decisive.

This collection sits somewhere between sketch and finished work:

• It allows me to test colour palettes and compositions quickly.

• It preserves a certain rawness, edges, cuts, irregularities of the cardboard remain visible.

• It brings portraits and scenes physically closer to the viewer, almost like postcards from personal memories.

These oils on cardboard are a reminder that not all important ideas need to start on a large canvas. Often, it is in these modest, experimental formats where new directions in my painting first appear.