josé patrício

José Patrício's (b. 1960, Recife, Brazil) work blurs the boundaries between installation and painting. His practice stems from the arrangement of everyday-use objects, such as dominoes, dice, buttons, and nails, to create patterns and images, either in a geometrical or organic manner, but always enigmatically familiar. Starting out his career in 1999 when he created an installation at the São Francisco Convent in João Pessoa, Patrício uses dominoes as a key element to several of his works. When viewed from afar, the patterns we see in his artworks assume an almost painterly tonality  with an overall appearance that contrasts with the graphical nature  of each individual domino 

Under the influence of important Brazilian artistic trends and movements, such as geometric abstraction and Concretism, Patrício emphasizes the subtle limit between order and chaos, suggesting that even the most rigid of mathematical formulas has an expressive potential dimension. To the critic and curator Paulo Sérgio Duarte, Patrício’s accumulation procedure places us “on a different level than the issues set forth by the progress of science and technique in artwork.  As the terrain of combinatorial mathematics is incorporated as a starting point, we are faced with the combination of series, endless in their possibilities. The problem is no longer the reproduction of the same; it is now about producing endless others from the same.”

José Patrício lives and works in Recife, Brazil. Recent solo shows include: Potência criadora infinita, at Nara Roesler (2021), in São Paulo, Brazil; José Patrício: Algorithm in 'Object Recognition', at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong H'Queens (2018), in Hong Kong, China; Precisão e acaso, at Museu Mineiro (2018), in Belo Horizonte, and at Museu Nacional Honestino Guimarães (MUN) (2018), in Brasília, Brazil; Ponto zero, at Sesc Santo Amaro (2017), in São Paulo, Brazil; Explosão Fixa, at Instituto Ling (2017), in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He featured in biennials such as the 22^nd Bienal de São Paulo (1994) and the 3rd Mercosul Visual Arts Biennial, in Porto Alegre (1994), both in Brazil; and the 8th Havana Biennial, in Cuba (2003). Recent group shows include: Utopias e distopias, at Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAM-BA) (2022), in Salvador, Brazil (2022); Ateliê de Gravura: da tradição à experimentação, at Fundação Iberê Camargo (FIC) (2019), in Porto Alegre, Brazil; Géométries Américaines, du Mexique à la Terre de Feu, at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (2018), in Paris, France; Asas e Raízes, at Caixa Cultural (2015), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Le Hors-Là, at Usina Cultural (2013), in João Pessoa, Brazil. His work is included in the collections of: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France; Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães (MAMAM), Recife, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAM-BA), Salvador; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.