Size is René Treviño’s friend. Upon entering Battle Cry, the Grimaldis Gallery’s current exhibition of Treviño’s recent works, “From Barye’s Horse” dominates one entire wall. The large piece features a pair of horses—presumably modeled after French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye’s “Turkish Horse, No. 2,” included in the Walters Art Museum’s 2007 Untamed: The Art of Antoine-Louis Barye—rendered in stop-sign acrylic red paint on mylar. He’s certainly worked large before—his 2007 Grimaldis exhibition Saguaro Warriors featured his now signature portraits of historical figures in large scale—but “From Barye’s Horse” feels monumental in comparison.

The immensity of the piece enables you to get up close and personal with Treviño’s process, as the acrylic on the mylar surface is fascinatingly inconsistent. It looks more thickly applied in some areas, and it’s congealed into subtly different intensities of the hue. In reproduction these horses look like they have the quality of a print, that somewhat manufactured finish of something mechanically reproduced. In person the presence of the artist’s hand is undeniable, and that gestural element lends the red a certain tension.

Color is Treviño’s friend too. While Treviño has always liked color in his output—his ongoing “Propaganda” series of images loves hot pinks and golds—he often uses a singular color as a design element: as a finely drawn background to a scene, as the dominant emotional hue in a composition, etc. In his 2010 “Self Portrait” included here, color receives a more multifarious treatment. Treviño doesn’t render himself in this act of self-portraiture; instead, he paints a circular Aztec calendar in various shades of sunshine—orange, marigold, maize—and pairs it with a black rooster, that durable symbol of Mexican machismo and folkloric omen of luck. The painting only includes a few colors—various yellows, black, red for the rooster’s comb—but it’s the most playful composition here, a welcome indication of creative loosening up and relaxation.

Treviño’s output is meticulous, refined, and precise: You get the impression that no mark appears on a sheet of mylar or paper before Treviño knows exactly what he’s looking for and how he’s going to go about realizing it. That control and absolute focus is what lends his portraits of men their riveting photorealistic certainty. He has been making these portraits for a few years now, and they continue to fascinate. Treviño realizes these full-body portraits in black and white on slate gray background, a strategy that makes them feel a bit like old photographs. That’s certainly the effect with some of the historical figures Treviño chooses. Whether it’s the Native American chief Red Cloud or King Edward VII, Treviño’s confident treatment of them captures these great men with an air of dignity and grace.

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