After graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from Universidad de Granada, Carlos Aires furthered his training abroad, mostly in Holland, Belgium and New York. After fourteen years he returned to Spain in 2009 and established his studio in Madrid. He has received important awards such as Generación 2008 of Caja Madrid or the Pont Museum Prize in the Netherlands. What is more, he is the first Spanish artist to receive one of the most important national awards in Belgium: Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge en 2005. Approaching Carlos Aires' figure means to open ourselves to the possibility of an art where antagonistic elements coexist; perversion, catastrophe, festivity, violence, desire, passion, suffering, death. His work is in the end the opening of a playful and tragic space while pointing out an unexpected equivalence between pain and pleasure. As a result, his works have a sophisticated finishings that contains traces of Baroque, a style very present in the Andalusian culture in which Carlos Aires grew up, as reflected by the use of golden surfaces and the great profusion of elements, from which is derived a nostalgic and kitsch aesthetic. Lush materialization nevertheless offers a deep critique of today's society. The artist's ironic vision notes without falling into the vain provocation a immune consumer society which shows up unimpressed by the major catastrophes of our time. to this effect, he turns to the public imagination by using images from the mass media or different popular characters' effigies.
His works were recently presented individually at Centre d'art et de photographie in Lectoure; Museo Cerralbo, Madrid; CDAN Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca; Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander; CAC, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga; or Centro de Arte de Alcobendas also in Madrid. Among the collective exhibitions in which he has participated stand out¡Dulces Sueños! At les Abattoirs, Toulouse; XXV años de la Colección Alcobendas at Centro de Arte Alcobendas in Madrid; A short century: MACBA Collection, at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; En plan travesti (y radical) at Tabacalera, Madrid; Extraña Varsovia at Centro Cultural Maria Victoria Atencia in Málaga; Abierto-Abierto at Estudios Los Guayabamos in Guadalajara, Mexico; Black Disguises at MMSU, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka; PIGS, Artium, Vitoria; Les mondes inversés, B.P.S.22, Charleroi; 5th Thessaloniki Biennale; and Bucharest Biennale 6.