Jorge Tacla primarily works with painting, drafting scenes which depict the aftermath of both man-made and natural catastrophes. Subjects have included the 2020 Beirut explosion and the Black Lives Matter protests. He also often draws on his experience of coming of age in Chile during the dictatorship, where violence was an everyday occurrence. Seeking to unravel the relationship between aggressors and their victims, Tacla hazily applies oils to canvas to represent the ways memory intersects with traumatic experiences. Always slightly out of focus, buildings or figures appear to shudder, visibly unsettled by the weight of what has taken place. Tacla often leaves sections of original sketches on his canvases unpainted, revealing the painting’s ‘skin’ as he puts it, gesturing towards the fragility of our own bodies and minds in the fallout of disasters. Rejecting readings of his work as political, Tacla states “the world is in many ways collapsing due to the ambitions of politics”. In response to this, Taccla empathetically digests the psychological impact of societal and political points of rupture, helping us better understand the damage humanity too readily unleashes upon itself. ...
