Barrio Escalante, San José

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Con vista al Mar, by Carlos Tapia. An almost disconcerting frontality organizes this room where domestic rest mutates into a psychedelic feast.
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Carlos Tapia

Con vista al MarSold

Year
2022
Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
160 × 215 cm
Status
Sold
Palette
magenta, ultramarine blue, chrome yellow, warm white, olive green
Brushwork
Dense impasto and graphic outlines with textured palette-knife areas and painterly brushwork.

Curatorial analysis

An almost disconcerting frontality organizes this room where domestic rest mutates into a psychedelic feast. In the exact center, perched atop a tubular chaise lounge upholstered in radiant purple, a wide-eyed feline commands the axis of the scene. Its rigidity immediately contrasts with the chromatic vibration that envelops it, turning the small creature into the impassive witness of an overflowing environment.

The interior space opens in perspective through three arched doorways onto a terrace with a balustrade and checkerboard tiling, framed by a dense blue marine horizon beneath cotton-like cumulus clouds. Yet, the serenity of the seascape is subverted by the aggressive vitality of the walls and ceiling. Flanking the room, two monumental, grotesque portraits of feline figures, one displaying a multicolored set of teeth with orthodontic braces, compress the space and gaze out at the viewer with carnivalesque sarcasm.

The pictorial matter operates through sharp tactile contrasts: a thick white floor, worked with palette-knife touches that trap the light and provide an almost sculptural presence, functions as a neutral foundation that allows pure yellows, magentas, and strident greens to collide without softening. Overhead, purple beams and a kaleidoscopic, faceted ceiling accelerate the room's dizzying perspective, anchored at the center by a chandelier suspended like an ironic pendulum.

Tapia constructs an interior where holiday luxury and caricature coexist without hierarchy. By dismantling the idyllic coastal postcard with biting humor and visual saturation, the room ceases to be a mere retreat and becomes a living theatrical stage, inhabited by absurdity and painterly euphoria.

Con vista al Mar

More works by Carlos Tapia

153 works

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View all 153 works by Carlos Tapia

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