Rafa Macarron

RAFA MACARRÓN (Madrid, 1981).
Untitled.
Mixed media on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 131 x 97 cm.

In this painting, Rafa Macarrón displays his unmistakable visual language on a two-color background, a resource with which he separates a lemon yellow field and a pink sky. On the canvas, in an apparently chaotic but finely orchestrated way, everyday and dreamlike elements are intertwined: girls doing the pine tree, dogs running around, giraffes roaming freely, a toy car winding through the park, a femme fatale smoking with an indifferent air, an outdoor library, with stairs, shelves and self-absorbed readers.... This seamless transition between the urban, the domestic, nature and the introspective is characteristic of the Macarron universe, where time and space collapse into a single plane. The characters, resolved with an expressionist, filiform and loose stroke, are presented as homunculi: disproportionate bodies, with long limbs and disjointed torsos, with heads too big or too small, asymmetrical or absent eyes. They are figures that verge on the entomological, and Macarrón drew these social insects with ease and lucidity. This type of work perfectly illustrates what has made Rafa Macarrón a singular figure within the contemporary Spanish art scene: the creation of an autonomous world, populated by beings that seem to inhabit the border between the human, the animal and the symbolic, with a tender look at the modern condition.

Rafa Macarrón is one of the young Spanish artists with the greatest international projection at present. His painting brings into play wide and neutral spaces, with intense and vivid colors, through which unstable characters with fragile limbs and huge heads walk. In this way, he creates scenes that do not dispense with the figurative world, but that immerse the viewer in a dreamlike environment, full of lyricism. The artist recognizes that he is influenced by artists such as Dubuffet, Fraile, Matta or Quirós, as well as by the comics and Spanish painting of the 50s and 60s. His exhibition career began in 2006, with a solo show at the Sala Príncipe Sport in Madrid, entitled Trabubus. Since then he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in national and international centers. Since 2008 he has also participated, with notable success, in numerous international art fairs, such as Art Madrid, Art Valencia, Scope Basel, the Young Art Taipei, ARCO Madrid, Art Miami - Aqua, Art Lima, Context New York, Berliner Liste, and others... He has received several awards, such as the BMW Painting Prize in 2010 or the Best Artist Arco Award in 2013. His work is preserved in important collections and museums, such as the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in New York, the BMW Foundation in Spain, the Vivanco Foundation in La Rioja, or the Pilar Citoler collection.