Rafa Macarrón

RAFA MACARRÓN (Madrid, 1981).
"Operación Limpieza", 2010.
Mixed media (collage and oil) on canvas with methacrylate urn.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Size: 140 x 240 x 4 cm.
Under a cobalt blue sky dotted with stars, a filiform character with a big head directs a water hose over a group of strange creatures, some of which resemble elephants, dogs and giraffes. The staged metropolitan allegory is evident, with the fauna of outsiders, night owls and vagrants being sprayed by some municipal guard on one of his "cleaning" rounds. Rafa Macarrón's style is unique and unmistakable: distorted bodies, delicate anatomical shapes, colours applied on flat surfaces with almost fluorescent intensities, dreamlike stagings but rooted in everyday reality... All of this is reflected in this suggestive composition. The work shows Macarrón's singular universe, characterised by the creation of dreamlike images through a language influenced by the world of comics, Spanish painting of the 50s and 60s, the work of Dubuffet, Fraile, Matta and Quirós.
Rafa Macarrón is one of the young Spanish artists with the greatest international projection at present. His painting brings into play wide, neutral spaces, with intense, vivid colours, through which unstable characters, with fragile limbs and enormous heads, pass. In this way, he creates scenes which do not dispense with the figurative world, but which immerse the spectator in a dreamlike environment, full of lyricism. The artist acknowledges that he is influenced by artists such as Dubuffet, Fraile, Matta and Quirós, as well as by comic strips and Spanish painting of the 1950s and 1960s. 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 centres. Since 2008 he has also participated, with notable success, in numerous international art fairs, such as Art Madrid, Art Valencia, Scope Basel, 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 held 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, and the Pilar Citoler Collection.