Escalera ImposibleSold

A domestic interior erupts in planes of pure color where gravity and scale relinquish their ordinary laws. In this large square format, Carlos Tapia articulates a playful universe that openly converses with festive iconography and daydreaming. The eye is immediately caught by the brazen frontality of a tabby cat lounging on a scallop-backed armchair in turquoise and violet tones; its humanized posture, almost like that of a mocking sphinx, engages the viewer with piercing electric blue eyes.

Behind the feline, a painting within the painting introduces the totemic presence of a flower-crowned skull, an explicit nod to the Catrina and the festive Latin American memento mori. Rather than imposing solemnity, death here coexists with an overflowing vitality. This coexistence repeats on the right half of the canvas, dominated by the vertical structure that gives the piece its title: a sinuous trunk sprouting floating steps, defying any architectural principle. Up these stairs, orange cats climb toward an ogival arched window that appears to filter the light of antique stained glass.

The space is organized through diagonal tensions that disrupt traditional perspective. The floor dissolves into undulating chromatic fields (lavenders, sky blues, and greens) leading toward an open doorway onto a colonial balcony, suggesting an exterior that is as radiant as it is illusory. In the foreground, anchoring the lower right corner, a bulbous vase holds deep crimson anthuriums whose veins and yellow spadices provide an almost tactile botanical vibration.

The pictorial matter settles with firm brushstrokes and dark outlines reminiscent of comic art or decorative stained glass, yet charged with a deeply personal cadence. Tapia thus constructs a sanctuary inhabited by intimate myth, where everyday objects, cultural memory, and poetic absurdity share the very same vibrant room.