Barrio Escalante, San José

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Mio Dijo el Gato, by Carlos Tapia. A steep, dizzying high angle transforms a stately living room into a flat, overflowing tapestry of rhythms.
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Carlos Tapia

Mio Dijo el Gato

Year
2005
Technique
Screen Print
Dimensions
60 × 50 cm
Status
Available
Palette
cobalt blue, terracotta orange, leaf green, yellow, crimson
Brushwork
Flat colors applied in uniform coats with sharp outlines and no tonal gradations.

Curatorial analysis

A steep, dizzying high angle transforms a stately living room into a flat, overflowing tapestry of rhythms. At the summit of this domestic order, a Siamese cat with cobalt-blue eyes rests on the back of an armchair patterned with green foliage, regarding the viewer with the certainty of an undisputed master. Its sinuous posture counterbalances the spatial tension of a room where the floor seems to rise like a vertical wall.

The scene dispenses with classical perspective to organize objects through remarkably bold chromatic juxtapositions. Around the central rug, bordered by ochre and yellow scrollwork, pieces of furniture engage in dialogue with autonomous visual identities. To the right, an armchair with undulating stripes of crimson, yellow, and emerald green imposes its graphic vibration; to the left, a chair with a curved back supports an open book hinting at a human presence that has just vanished. In the center, an orange terracotta tea service hovers atop a deep-blue round table, indifferent to physical gravity.

In the background, an archway illuminated in warm tones reveals a deep corridor through which a mysterious green feline silhouette prowls, serving as an intriguing echo of the main animal. The screenprint resolves these spatial transitions through flat planes of solid color and contours defined with millimeter precision. Deposited in opaque, clean layers, the ink eliminates naturalistic tonal gradations, turning light into an intrinsic property of pigment saturation.

Beneath the possessive claim declared by its title, the space remains suspended between the warmth of daily comfort and an uncanny visual theatricality. Every patterned surface, from the blue checkerboard floor to the bowl of green fruit in the lower corner, pays homage to a domestic dominion where the laws of geometry surrender to the animal's whim and repose.

Mio Dijo el Gato

More works by Carlos Tapia

153 works

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View all 153 works by Carlos Tapia

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