Trasver-See through
Daniel Vera Vargas is an artist from Monzón (Huesca), Spain. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Zaragoza and later a higher degree in illustration at the School of Arts of Zaragoza. During his study years, he was already dedicated to graffiti and mural painting in parallel. Currently, he is working as a muralist and a painter, but at the same time, he often finds himself experimenting with other mediums.
Working as a muralist has allowed him to get closer to the public space, society, and the life of the streets. This environment and the street stories have an influence on his other work, especially in his pictorial research through photography, his art installations, and his urban landscape and abstract painting.
He has held workshops with mural paintings with kids and elementary schools, tackling social and environmental topics. His work can be found in many towns in the region of Aragon, as well as in Lugo, Madrid, and Transylvania, Romania. This year he won a scholarship award A3rte by the winery Enate, which recognizes and helps 5 emerging young artists of Aragon, while his book recipe for abstract paintings made him win the 3rd prize in Young Creators of Aragon in 2021. He won 1st prize for urban art in Binéfar in 2020, and he has been invited to participate in festivals such as Asalto in Épila, Pinta Malasaña 2021/2022, or Gallery 50700.
Mural painting is an ideal medium to transform unused and non-spaces and offer a new perception of public space. Most of the interventions are carried out in small towns or rural environments where a general aesthetic prevails. One of the main objectives is that the interventions coexist harmoniously and do not result in aggression with the urban set.
The mural trompe l'oeil seeks the illusion of mimicking the landscape in such a way that it can go unnoticed by the naked eye, a very important part of the process consists of the observation and reproduction of the shades of the landscape when shaping the color palette.
The Trasver project is a proposal to recover spaces and enhance natural environments in rural landscapes during the time when these spaces are neglected and contaminate the visual landscape. But at the same time, this project aims to bring attention and promotion to rural areas that now are getting more and more depopulated.
The project began with the 1st Binéfar urban art award where I intervened on an electrical tower in which a new tree appeared on the horizon on each of the visible faces of the structure, as the locals would say that a building was replaced with a tree. This line of work adapts very well to the intervened places, it generates a dialogue and a game of perception with the spectator. From a boring building electrical or water supplier, it transforms into a public space or a landscape wall.
The most beautiful part of the project is that the locations where I usually make the interventions do not have many references to urban art and this creates a new interest in this discipline in the places where it is carried out. The locals get excited and enjoy a lot during the creation process, they use to gather and talk about my work, and that is how I create/activate a public space, a new space for socialization be it even for a short period.