Weird & Wonderful

Once upon a time, there was a tiger and a bird. They wove in and out of the sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints by Catalan artist Ramiro Fernandez Saus, telling their story. Only, it's not very clear how it started or how it will end. The two animals are a recurring motif in Mr Fernandez Saus’s work and each of his pieces feels almost like a snapshot of their neverending tale. The latest ‘instalment’ is Gold of the Tiger (above), a bronze painted in oil, in which the big cat sits on a cloud, a kind, thoughtful and perhaps ever so slightly tired expression on its face, the bird alert on its back. It is, as Mr Fernandez Saus explains, ‘an ideal representation of a tiger as an angel. So the tiger lives in the sky’. The bronze is on display at ‘The Lightness of the Days’, Long & Ryle’s latest exhibition of the Catalan artist’s work (until June 28; www.longandryle.com), together with A Winter Reading, a 2023 painting in which the tiger rests, huge and a little forlorn, at the foot of a red armchair in a library, as the bird inspects a cherry printed on a book page. What will happen next?