Comedian Julio Torres Has a Surreal New HBO Special About His Favorite Shapes. He Has Thoughts About Art, Too

Julio Torres is an aesthete. His favorite color is “shiny”
(followed closely by “clear.”) He’ll happily tell you this—but it’s
also obvious just by looking at him. With platinum-blonde hair,
chrome-colored clothing, and a thin film of glitter covering his
skin, he looks like a pop star sent from the future.

Born and raised in El Salvador, Torres moved to New York in the
late 2000s to attend the New School. He began performing a few
years later, and has since developed a distinct brand of comedy
that crosses over into experimental territory. Show your parents
his comedy and there’s a good chance they just won’t get it. His
rhythm is unfamiliar. There’s no quick setup-punchline,
setup-punchline formula. Instead, he begins many bits with “ums” or
dramatic deep breaths.

But he’s also resonating with the mainstream. For the last few
years, Torres has worked as a writer on Saturday Night
Live, where he’s been behind many a talked-about sketch (for
instance, the viral “Papyrus,” in which Ryan Gosling played a graphic
designer enraged and tormented by the font from the Avatar
poster). This year, he also co-starred in the Fred Armisen-created
HBO show Los
Espookys.

On August 10, Torres will debut his new one-hour comedy special
on HBO, titled “My Favorite Shapes,”
which finds the slight, platinum blond comedian sitting before a
conveyor belt as a parade of his favorite “shapes” rolls past.
Here, he treats the concept of “favorite shape” in the same offbeat
way as he treats the question of “favorite color”: Included in his
list of favorites are a glass slipper, a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy,
and a pearl named “Timothée Chalamet.”

“I think they beg for my attention,” Torres tells artnet News
when asked if he picks his shapes or his shapes pick him. “I’ll be
like, ‘Ooh. Who are you? Let’s do a show. I think I can cast you in
something.’”

Ahead of the special’s premier, Torres sat down talk about his
favorite objects in art and design—think of them as art-specific
bonus cuts from My Favorite Shapes. While he was at it, he
also revealed how the art critic Jed Perl got him a job and the
time he made Marina Abramovic cry.

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s
Busts

“An exhibition of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt busts
was the first show I saw at the Neue Galerie. I just thought it was
so funny. I don’t know if I recall the story correctly or not, but
I think there was some patroness who wanted him to make these busts
that resembled her friends, which is such an odd request. I just
think it’s so funny that a sculptor was like, ‘Well, how about
they’re not regal and serene but instead they’re making these funny
faces.’ It’s like comedian as artist—or artist as comedian, which I
really like.”

The Wine Cistern at the Tower of
London

“The Crown Jewels in London is a heavily touristy place,
obviously. You move about the space almost as if going through a
Disney installation—you’re timed and they keep it moving along and
you can’t take pictures of anything. But there was this big golden,
incredibly ornate goblet there that I’ll always remember. One of
the handles was a lion and another handle was a unicorn—of course.
The unicorn had a gold chain around its neck. And I just thought it
was so… sexy. This golden unicorn struggling with a golden chain
around its neck.”

Picasso’s Las
Meninas

“My dad’s favorite painting is Velazquez’s Las Meninas.
He would show it to me often and talk to me about the mirrors in
it. It’s a really great painting for learning about art. Now, doing
what I do and going about life the way I go about life, I feel a
bigger connection to Picasso’s cover of Las Meninas—his
take on it. I like that the idea of someone saying, ‘No, let me
abstract it. Let me fix it.’

As a matter of fact, I was just in Barcelona and I went to the
Picasso museum there. It was sort of this unintentional pilgrimage
because, when I was at the New School, I wrote a paper on Picasso’s
Guernica, about abstraction and distortion and war
through a shattered lens, etc. etc. etc. Jed Perl, the art critic,
was my professor. He took a liking to me after that paper and that
got me the job that kept me in the country. I was the archivist for
this tiny foundation called the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation that
looked after the works of those two artists. I worked in a little
windowless room, measuring stuff and entering data. It wasn’t my
lifestyle, but it was stimulating in a way and I did like the
paintings.”

The Gargoyles on the
Chrysler building 

“One of the biggest bummers for me when I moved to New York was
learning that the insides of places like, say, the Chrysler
Building, aren’t as beautiful as the outsides. The offices inside
it aren’t these Deco-decadent interiors; they just look like
cubicles. I love the gargoyles on the Chrysler building, though. I
wrote a little play about one of them in college. In it, a friend
of mine played a woman who fell in love with a gargoyle from the
Chrysler Building. She kept talking about leaving her husband, whom
she despised, for the gargoyle. But she never did.”

Marina Abramovic’s
Brain

“We have to add Marina’s brain to the list. Or maybe the
borderline Ikea furniture that she performed The Artist Is Present on at MoMA. A friend
of mine was so into Marina Abramovic at that time. I was skeptical,
especially after it became this thing where we’d have to wait
outside all night. But I was like, ‘Ah, okay,’ and we did—we waited
all night. It was a very interesting experience. Most of the people
in line were performance artists—it was very much a pilgrimage for
them. When it was my turn, I sat down across from her and looked
into her eyes. After a moment, she started weeping. I think she was
just so tired. Then a guard tapped me on my shoulder and just said
‘the performance is now over, sir.’ I think she needed to reset.
She didn’t cry for everyone, though. I got a cry.”

Zaha Hadid’s Serpentine
Pavilion

“My mom is an architect, so I’ve always gone into places and
been very stimulated by interiors. I visited the space next to the
Serpentine when I was in London doing the Shapes show—it
was just so exciting. There’s just nothing better to me than when
the interior matches the exterior and it’s all a complete, coherent
thought—unlike the heartbreaking Rockefeller Center or Chrysler
Building experiences. She’s a very sensual architect. I strive to
do that with the work that I do too. The stage and the clothes and
the joke and the hair—it’s all the same.”

The post Comedian Julio Torres Has a Surreal New HBO Special
About His Favorite Shapes. He Has Thoughts About Art, Too
appeared first on artnet News.