Jorge Tacla

 

For more than three decades, Jorge Tacla has been singularly dedicated to the depiction of physical and psychic space run through by individual and collective trauma. Besides picturing architectures and landscapes devastated by havoc and destruction, his art challenges a basic human assumption about civilization:  the idea that people, buildings, landmarks and cities are safe, settled and unshakable. A glance at today’s newspaper headlines reveals the obvious—they are not.

 

Jorge Tacla, Hidden Identity 22, 2009. Oil on canvas. 50 x 80 in. (127 x 203.2 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery. Photo credit: Robert Lawrenszon.

 

In both Untitled (2008) and Hidden Identity 22 (2009), Tacla departs from his common practice of depicting ruined buildings and cityscapes to concentrate on the body: specifically, that of Marxist guerrilla commander Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Using as source material a 1967 photo taken after Guevara’s assassination in Vallegrande, Bolivia, and Andrea Mantegna’s Dead Christ (1483), Tacla exposes a wavering, particulate view of a celebrated human subject. In the Chilean painter’s hands, Guevara’s figure alternately appears and disappears like dust motes in a shaft of light.

— CVF, USFCAM

 

Jorge Tacla, Untitled, 2008. Oil on canvas. 36 x 35 in. (91.44 x 88.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery. Photo credit: Cristóbal Cea.

 
 

“Physical participation is usually de rigueur in the world of culture. This is obviously completely on pause since everything is online now. It’s too early to talk about the future. I hope a greater humanism prevails, both in the production of works of art but also in the networks that make art circulate.”

— Jorge Tacla

 
 
Artist Jorge Tacla. Photo by Ari Maldonado.

Artist Jorge Tacla. Photo by Ari Maldonado.

About Jorge Tacla

(Santiago, Chile, 1958 )

He lives and works in New York City and Santiago, Chile.

Jorge Tacla creates tactile, ghost-like paintings that blur the formalistic boundaries between abstraction and representation to present an unsettling view of the world. Tacla Illuminates the variability of identity for victim and aggressor—an agent who is disassociated from his or her own identity—and the complexity of the assessment of guilt. These critical issues, and their situation in the larger, collective human experience, are the defining theoretical inquiries of Tacla's work. His work has been shown in respected institutions across the world, and select exhibitions include the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Santiago, Chile), Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, DC), Tufts University Art Gallery (Medford, MA), Bruce Museum (Greenwich, CT), 55th Venice Biennale, Dublin Contemporary (Dublin, Ireland), and Sharjah Biennial 10 (Sharjah, UAE). Among the artist’s many awards and fellowships is the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Artist’s website: jorgetacla.com

Gallery website: cristintierney.com

Artist Instagram: @jorgetacla