Tyger Tyger Burning Bright! – Marco Arce

After 15 years dedicated to hand painting small postcard size images, which were shown singly, or grouped in quartets, polyptychs, with an occasional diptych thrown in, Mexican artist Macri Arce in his recent exhibition, "The Tiger Series" at Galeria Ramis Barquet, has taken a bold new leap into uncharted territory.

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright!

Marco Arce

 

 

 

 

 

 

After 15 years dedicated to hand painting small postcard size images, which were shown singly, or grouped in quartets, polyptychs, with an occasional diptych thrown in, Mexican artist Macri Arce in his recent exhibition, "The Tiger Series" at Galeria Ramis Barquet, has taken a bold new leap into uncharted territory. Though the subject matter is relatively familiar–Arce has long showed an interest in children’s stories, comic book characters and animals, specifically the pig and the tiger–the size, manner of construction and the way the viewer is asked to experience the artist’s newest work has changed radically.

Arce first came to public recognition in this country with his solo exhibition "To Dissolve/To Collect" at the Galeria Ramis Barquet in 2000. Hundreds of small, hand-painted watercolors, framed in sets of four, filled the gallery walls in salon-style presentation. Among the strongest of these quartets were the artists’ recreation of contemporary art-historical happenings in the 70s in which he linked the most bloody and sexually explicit moments of performance artists such as Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Paul McCarthy, Anna Mendieta and Chris Burden.

Each painting in "Tiger Series," digitally composed by Arce and hand painted by studio assistants is composed of countless postcard-sized paintings, which when affixed to a pre-planned grid, form the painting’s final image. Some works, like Tigre verde, the head of a tiger, composed of 25 separate paintings are single framed paintings. Others are considerably larger and more complex. Tigre rayas is a dizzying succession of jumping Dalí-esque tiger heads superimposed on a vibrantly stripped Gene Davis background. Taking up an entire wall, it is comprised of 300 small grid paintings across six panels.

In Tigre del caminante (225 paintings, 5 panels) Arce enlarges the figure of the tiger until all that we really see in the painting’s background is the ominous tiger fur pattern. Flirting with narrative, the artist has added, down the middle and across all five painted panel paintings, a horizontal comic strip, complete with a young boy, a monster and a mysterious house hidden in the forest. Here, as we try to fashion our own story from the artist’s visual clues, we are teasingly brought back to the innocent years of our own storybook childhood.

In Tigre olanes (190 paintings, 3 panels), a stunning work of intertwining gold and orange tiger heads, Arce turns to the hallucinogenic. Our eyes start to twirl in our head as we look at this picture. In playing with our perception on so many levels–each tiger picture demands to be both thought about and viewed in its own unique way–Arce has created a highly surreal habitat that magically transports us, sometimes playfully, sometimes a bit menacingly, from circus to zoo to jungle. One could say that the artist also answers William Blake’s time-honored question, "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What Immortal hand of eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?" Why Marco Arce, of course.