JORGE TACLA

(Santiago, 1958)

For over three decades, New York- based Chilean painter Jorge Tacla has devoted himself to depicting disasters from human history. Taking public spaces and architectural constructions as metaphors of social structures, Tacla appropriates media images of devastated places and translates them through paintings that reproduce the disorientation, chaos, and confusion that permeate these locations once they have been physically destroyed. The result of meticulous and often repeated processes of compilation, study, and composition of images, Tacla’s paintings depict particular episodes, yet appear repetitive, as they cross different periods and regions, from Palestine to Washington D.C. to Santiago, Chile. Tacla finds a metaphor of these traumatic events in rust, ashes, and smoke. By representing ruins, his paintings embody the devastating force as well as resilience of humankind.