josé patrício potência criadora infinita,

Galeria Nara Roesler | São Paulo is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition José Patrício: Potência criadora infinita, a solo show curated by Paula Braga, on view from May 22 until July 24, 2021. The presentation will showcase the artist’s most recent production. For decades, the artist has dedicated his work to incorporating mathematical procedures in his compositions, using and organizing everyday objects into hypnotic designs.

Since the end of the 1990s, Patrício has continuously and methodically explored ordinary materials such as plastic figurines, buttons, dice and dominoes. These objects’ apparent banality conveys a certain playfulness, while the artist’s systematic compositions strips them from their function, redefines their purpose and transforms them into unusual images.

Apart from the act of re-appropriation of objects, shifting from the everyday to the universe of visual arts, the questions of seriality and reproduction are also key aspects of Patrício’s practice. Indeed, the artist assembles, within a single composition, huge quantities of the same object - as such, the item becomes both, identifiable in its singularity, and de-characterized by the abundance in numbers and the artist’s imposed compositional function.

On the occasion of his sixth exhibition at Galeria Nara Roesler, José Patrício has chosen to further his investigation into the search for and understanding of the potential beauty of everyday objects, creating configurations that seek to amplify the items’ formal possibilities by unveiling, often inherent, rhythms and colors.

Specifically, his most recent series consists of a body of works composed of small plastic cubes, whose colors vary from white to black, going through all the grays in between, totaling in twenty-two different tonalities. By focusing specifically on grayscales, and excluding other colors, the structure of the work becomes even more pronounced, with a sense of movement, dynamism and rhythm transpiring ever so strongly.

Patrício’s new works are titled so as to further emphasize the series’ focus on motion and cadence, with names such as circuito tonal [tonal circuit], trajetória sobre preto [black trajectory], trajetória sobre branco [white trajectory]. Ultimately, movement is incorporated into the artist’s practice, not only as a path for his artistic research, but also as a source of endless possibilities and combinations. Though the series uses very few elements, employing variations of the same object, each work presents a different sequence alluding to the idea that compositional options are infinite.

According to the curator Paula Braga, the fact that the eccentric and concentric compositions capture the public’s eye more effectively than the artist’s creative process, reveals that time becomes visible when showing the impossibility of exhausting compositional possibilities.