Barrio Escalante, San José

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Tocando las Puertas del Cielo, by Carlos Tapia. The domestic space erupts into a centrifugal vortex where traditional perspective is completely abolished.
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Carlos Tapia

Tocando las Puertas del CieloSold

Year
2014
Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
150 × 150 cm
Status
Sold
Palette
cadmium yellow, carmine red, cobalt blue, orange, titanium white
Brushwork
Flat acrylic fields delimited by graphic-style black line drawing, with thick impastos on the botanical motifs.

Curatorial analysis

The domestic space erupts into a centrifugal vortex where traditional perspective is completely abolished. The room curves in on itself as if contained within a reflective sphere or viewed through an extreme fisheye lens. At the neural center, a checkered floor in orange and dark brown holds a small table with transparent glassware, flanked by a baroque-inspired armchair laden with scrolls, an organic chair, and a chandelier that hangs displaced at the bottom of the canvas.

In the upper left, a wide-eyed white cat descends a floating staircase of fuchsia steps, introducing an almost oneiric presence that dialogues with the three white calla lilies in the lower foreground. These flowers, rendered with denser and more tactile impasto, seem to act as a botanical portal or anchor framing the compositional vertigo. Toward the perimeter, heavy draperies in wine and deep blue compress the scene, while the walls radiate chromatic bands in yellow, lime green, and lavender, giving the architecture a festive, psychedelic pulse.

The firm, graphic black contour line delineates flat fields of color, endowing objects with an almost tangible solidity despite their spatial and anatomical distortion. This tension between the rigidity of the outline and the malleability of the forms transforms the bourgeois parlor into a vibrant stage, hovering between a lucid dream and playful delirium. Light does not emanate from an identifiable natural source or from the small blue window in the background; it radiates from the pure saturation of the pigment, turning everyday furniture into animated creatures dancing on the verge of collapse.

Tocando las Puertas del Cielo

More works by Carlos Tapia

153 works

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