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# Tomás Esson’s Whirling Gyroscopes of Paint
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/tomas-esson-the-goat-ica-miami/
- Published: 2020-12-11T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:51:29.000Z
- Description: In The GOAT, tongues, butts, and spillage all combine, expressing a delightful reverence of the corporeal.
- Author: Monica Uszerowicz
- Tags: Art, Florida, ICA Miami, Miami, Review, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 09:08 (2019, 2020, part 3)

MIAMI — In [Tomás Esson](http://tomasesson.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com)’s first solo museum presentation, the painter’s fleshy, anthropomorphic bodies emerge from more of them: a newly commissioned mural, “Wet Wall Drawing at ICA” (2020), spreads across a gallery-length wall and frames works like “Retrato #29 (Portrait #29)” (1998), in which a bovine creature leaks, lactates, and bellows. In a [recent interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HMFNci-Ocg&ref=hyperallergic.com), the Miami-based artist discussed the mural’s significance, the way it highlights “the five fundamental elements of life…the vagina, the breast, the mouth, the penis, and the anus.” It’s a whirling gyroscope, in black gesso, of tongues, butts, spillage.

In addition to more *Wet Paintings*, a series he began in the early 1990s, *The GOAT* takes viewers through 35 years of Esson’s studio practice, including his *Retratos (Portraits)* series and political skewers — such as “Mi homenaje al Che (My Homage to Che)” (1987), a painting that drew ire in his native Havana, Cuba. The claws and breasts of the beast-like figures lustily intertwined before Che’s visage appear throughout Esson’s work; their spiraled, emphatic movement is reflected even in the humanoid ribbons of “Seaweed” (2019), a piece inspired by the flora of Miami. Elsewhere, torsos fold into genitalia in anatomic ouroboroi; earthen mythological monsters emerge from the sea. Esson’s delightful reverence of the corporeal reminds me: oceanic waters are not unlike bodily fluids.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/dsc02441.jpg)

Installation view of *Tomás Esson: The GOAT*, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2020 (photo by Zachary Balber)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/dsc02436.jpg)

Installation view of *Tomás Esson: The GOAT*, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2020 (photo by Zachary Balber)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/dsc02500.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/dsc02524.jpg)

Installation view of *Tomás Esson: The GOAT*, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2020 (photo by Zachary Balber)

[Tomás Esson: ](https://icamiami.org/exhibition/tomas-esson/?ref=hyperallergic.com)[The GOAT ](https://icamiami.org/exhibition/tomas-esson/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*continues through May 2, 2021 at ICA Miami (61 NE 41st Street, Miami, FL). The exhibition is curated by Gean Moreno.*