La Carreta

Two emblems of the country's material identity collide in this small format: the facade of a colonial church and the skeletal framework of a traditional oxcart. They are not arranged according to traditional perspective, where the vehicle merely passes in front of the temple; here, both structures intersect, merging the weight of stone with the dynamism of joined timber.

The temple commands the center through a severe verticality, delineated with nervous, dark strokes that define niches, embedded columns, and belfry openings. Masses of opaque white illuminate the reliefs of the masonry, contrasting with the wall's ochre and the deep blacks of the doorways. Slicing through this static axis, an energetic vermilion diagonal erupts from the right: the shafts and stakes of the oxcart slice across the architecture, while the massive curve of the solid wheel anchors the lower right corner in emphatic red.

The mixed media leaves the reflective process bare. Graphite marks framing the scene and guiding perspectival axes coexist with heavily loaded brushstrokes and areas where the raw cream tone of the paper serves as neutral atmosphere. Dense patches of cobalt blue and purplish shadows peer through the woodwork and at the church flanks, providing visual weight and breaking the warmth of the earth tones and reds.

By stripping the scene of surrounding landscape and dismantling ordinary spatial logic, Quirós sidesteps the picturesque genre scene. The deliberate clash between sacred architecture and agricultural implement functions as a conceptual synthesis, a modern inquiry in which monumental heritage and agrarian labor condense into a single formal artifact of remarkable graphic tension.