Barrio Escalante, San José

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Es lo que Es, by Marijose Terán. Crumpled, exhausted aluminum imposes its presence immediately.
1 photo · 1 video

Marijose Terán

Es lo que EsSold

Year
2018
Technique
Mixed Media
Dimensions
150 × 130 cm
Status
Sold
Palette
aluminum silver, yellow ochre, carmine, cobalt blue, graphite black
Brushwork
Photorealistic facture of polished glazes and extremely sharp edges that accurately simulate the sheen of crumpled aluminum and the density of dry pigment.

Curatorial analysis

Crumpled, exhausted aluminum imposes its presence immediately. On a monumental scale measuring one and a half meters high, the viewer's gaze drops directly into a container crammed with paint tubes squeezed, folded, and drained to the very last drop of matter. A visceral tension emerges between the disposable nature of these studio scraps and the almost devotional rigor with which they are rendered.

This pictorial space dispenses with horizons, breathing margins, or neutral backgrounds; every corner is occupied by a tangle of collapsed cylinders, grooved plastic caps, and legible fragments of familiar brand names, barcodes, and pigment specifications. The artist organizes this apparent chaos through an intricate web of colliding diagonals, where the specular glints of worn metal clash with the opaque crusts of hardened paint around the nozzles. Luminous yellows, deep carmines, and intense blues burst forth as focal points of chromatic energy amidst the silvery chill and bruised whites of the battered labels.

Such descriptive exactitude harbors a sharp metalinguistic conceit: paint is deployed to depict the very vessel that holds and births it. The tube, a secondary object that usually vanishes once the work is fulfilled upon the canvas, here claims center stage. This surface acts as a visual logbook of physical labor, elapsed time, and the unyielding grind of the painter's craft, rather than an exercise in vacant virtuosity.

By titling the piece with a blunt tautology, Terán points to the bare truth of matter without relying on forced allegories. Yet, by elevating the refuse of creation to the status of a visual monument, the image subverts the classic still life, turning material fatigue into a powerful celebration of the act of painting itself.

Es lo que Es

More works by Marijose Terán

60 works

Available works

View all 60 works by Marijose Terán

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