Clarissa Diniz
Rio de Janeiro, 2020
Text written for Jos\u00e9 Bechara’s exhibition “Ways of Condemning Certainties” at Marilia Razuk gallery, S\u00e3o Paulo, 2020. Translated by Henrik Carbonnier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is widely known that a significant part of the paintings by Jos\u00e9 Bechara\ncome from a relationship of exchange. However, I propose we dedicate some\nparagraphs to the debt the artist acquires when exchanging new tarpaulins\nwith truckdrivers for used ones \u2013replete with the marks of time and usage\nfrom the transport industry \u2013, which become the territories of his works.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if it were possible, this text is uninterested in the economically\ncircumscribed debt of the greater value created from the tarpaulin as an\nelement of the truck and the other version of the same material \u2013 the art\nwork \u2013 born from being subjected to the artist\u2019s action and being enrolled into\nthe art world; a financial asymmetry produced and relished between two\nstates of a single, albeit transformed, object1. Recognizing this debt (which,\nfurthermore, crosses the history of euro-ethnocentric art and can be glimpsed\nin such distinct appropriation practices as in the ready-mades or imagined\nobjects developed by travelling artists in their routine symbolic traffic) is the\nsociopolitical starting point from which to briefly consider the methods of its\nformal realization.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is Jos\u00e9 Bechara himself who, as can be gleaned from his interviews, warns us that his work is \u201calways paying attention to accidents\u201d: \u201csomething falls, something fails, something else is missing… and this kind of problem is the problem that, in fact, gives you the strength and interest to follow, to make your next piece\u201d. For the artist, although his research can be understood based on the key of \u201cgeometric abstraction\u201d (and, more specifically, of a constructive vocabulary), his interest is not in the \u201caffirmation of a world\u201d through a \u201ccalculating instrument\u201d. The geometry of his work is, therefore, \u201cimprecise\u201d: \u201cthese lines, despite being here, are in a condition of appearing and disappearing. (…) Geometry fails like we fail, it is imperfect like we are imperfect and great amounts of effort are required to make it emerge, to exist. Life is like that\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a critique of modern Western rationality where \u2013 in fields as contiguous as\nthose of art, science or politics \u2013 everything is anxious to separate, organize\nand identify, Jos\u00e9 Bechara emphasizes his praise of the accidental due to its\nunpredictability and, consequently, its capacity to challenge the centralized\npower of the artist\u2019s \u201call powerful\u201d hand. In this sense, he states that his\nwork is \u201can intent in conditions of being affected by accidents\u201d, based on\nwhich arises \u201ca mental adventure to organize the next actions (…) in the\ndirection of arriving at a thing\u201d 2.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Becoming available to accidents has become, over more than two decades,\nlike a process of experimentation that mainly depends on two, oscillating\npresences\/phenomena: the tarpaulins from trucks and the oxidations that the\nartist produces on them. From the combination of the tarpaulins\u2019 pocked\nsurfaces and the effects of the copper or iron oxidations strewn over them,\nwhat emerge are the lines, color, spatiality and density of his images;\norganized, interfered and made more or less visible by the gestures of Jos\u00e9\nBechara.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This materiality \u2013 in debt to the tarpaulin\u2019s and oxidation\u2019s plasticity \u2013 is,\ntherefore, arrived at through time: from the period during which the\ntarpaulin is first used to the oxidation that, in Bechara\u2019s words, happen over a\nprocess of \u201cinduction and waiting\u201d3. Instead of being supposedly created by\nthe artist, the distribution of the stains and grey tones that make up the\nchromatic atmosphere of the images comes from the tarpaulins, much like\ntheir orange and green-blue hues arise from the properties of the metals that\nhave been oxidized. The spectrum of colors that, over the years, have\nbecome characteristic of Bechara\u2019s production is, fundamentally, a joint\ncreation \u2013 inscribed on the space time distributed over the trucks and truck\ndrivers, the rain and sun, the tarpaulin and its cuttings, the weather, the\nmetals, the humidity, the paints, the packing tape, gravity, intentions and\naccidents, among others \u2013 in which it is clear that the agency is not\nexclusively that of the artist, nor is it restricted to some of the elements\nimplied in the creation of these images, unless dispersed over the non-linear\nsequence of social, physical, chemical and aesthetic events.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the visual and spatial impact of these pieces \u2013 whose expanded scale\nand \u201cstandardages\u201d of color and geometry leap to the eye because they were\nmade in the condition of being the protagonists of the images \u2013 there is a\nslow, silent system of composition that is camouflaged and, at times,\ninvisible, but which, as Bechara admits, reveals the artist\u2019s interest in \u201cform,\nyes, but as long as the research has a relationship with some human drama\u201d4.\nThe aesthetic stridency of his pieces, owing to diverse forces, makes us see\nhow cynical the ambition of self-determination is that ethically and politically\nsustains the notion of autonomy of form or of the work of art.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201chuman drama\u201d or, as Bechara also likes to say, the \u201cexistential\ndimension\u201d5 of his studies thus resides less in eventual metaphors that the\ngeometry or some other of its characteristics can inspire, but, above all, in an\neconomy of power between the materials and agencies implied in the\ncreation of the images \u2013 a system that, from start to finish, places the artist\nin the condition of being indebted. Indebted not only because of the\noriginating appropriation of the tarpaulin, but also due to all the \u201caccidents\u201d\nthat are, as he tells us, co-responsible for the work.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coming from a Catholic upbringing, it is not rare to hear the artist refer to\nthe supposed asymmetry between human beings and God. In a conversation,\nBechara mentioned that he had spent many years intrigued by the condition in\nwhich, as heirs of the original sin, we live twisted around this unpayable debt\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
that, in turn, sustains the epistemological gap from which a policy of\nrepresentation emerges and in which God is the hierarchically, morally and\ncosmologically distant and higher figure than us. The separation between us\nand Him and, on the other hand, the missive that we would or should be in His\nimage and likeness, would leave Bechara in philosophical despair, until the\nmoment in which, inverting the poles of the relationship, he convinced\nhimself of the reversibility of this imperative: \u201cwell, if we are His image and\nlikeness, He is our image and likeness\u201d6, he concluded.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bechara\u2019s interpretation balances the terms relating to one of the foundations\nof Catholicism by understanding that God is also indebted to us, producing an\neconomy whose complexity makes it unfeasible to know for sure who is the\ndebtor and who is the creditor. Owing to each other the reference (or capital)\nthat makes us human or divine, we are implicated in a territory of\nundefinable relationships: inseparable, undetermined, insurgent. Made\ndestitute of any autonomy, neither us nor Him \u2013 neither the subject nor the\nform \u2013 are, to Bechara, circumscribed in their own terms, the point of view\nfrom which the interests of his work arise: \u201cNeither [the] chaotic space [of\nthe tarpaulin\u2019s visuality], nor [the] formalism [of the constructive grid he\ncreates on it] interest me, but what results from this conflict, which is a\nspace created by the simultaneous existence of these two events. It is a\nbalance between these terms\u201d7.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*
\nThe debt, this ancient debt known by capitalism, is also especially familiar to\nus, ex-colonials (sic), given the fact that its fictionalization invented an\neconomic, political, religious, police, discursive, cognitive, moral, cultural \u2013\nand aesthetic \u2013 system that has subordinated us, ensuring that, through slave\nlabor, we have had to pay the debt attributed to us by an apparatus of power\nand violence of every magnitude. Transforming us into debtors, the discourse\nand the economy of debt have elaborated a cynical rationality for the\ninevitable fact that, with colonial invasion and expropriation, we became the\ngreat creditors of the world \u2013 the source of natural, human and symbolic\nresources; participants and protagonists of a nascent \u201cglobal economy\u201d.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this context, thinking in terms of debt is not exactly adhering to its\ncapitalist dimension or proposing an economic reading, but, rather, it\nunderlines the ethical and political interests of its reiterated neutralization\nwhile operating our actions and works. Ignoring how much we owe to thusly\nproduce aesthetic narratives in which we figure as a duo of God in his\nAlmighty version \u2013 reenacting, with our intentions, gestures and projects, a\nkind of eternal Big Bang \u2013 seems to divert us from the decisive need to\neducate ourselves in order to create based on the implications of all the\nforces in the world and not in detriment or denial of them.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jos\u00e9 Bechara points to this direction when he dedicates himself to systems of\nco-creation in which forces as distinct as the artist himself, the tarpaulins and\noxidation, in addition to innumerous accidents: \u201cIt having worked out is also\nan accident. Every accident is good. I deal with it; I count on it\u201d8. Dissonant\nin relation to the purifying parameters (\u201cpurity is dishonesty\u201d9, he challenges)\nof a certain approach \u2013 normally the constructive, almost always geometric \u2013\nof form, but at the same time, affiliated to it by historical circumstances and\naesthetic choices, the work of Bechara places itself half-way between\nformalist tradition and the willingness to affect itself with forces coming from\nother territories.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some way, it is because they are under the weight of these debts that Jos\u00e9\nBechara\u2019s forms make, \u201ctremendous efforts to emerge, to exist\u201d. Implicated\nin a complex and inseparable web of debts and credits between social,\nphysical, chemical and aesthetic phenomena and existences, his images feed\nback into this singular economy of art, preferring, instead of its habitual\ndesire for ontological manumission, eternal debt.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1 \u201cThe action is as follows: I take a new, clean tarpaulin free of any markings except for the manufacturer\u2019s brand. It is orange. When I give this tarpaulin to the truck driver, I am handing over an item that he needs and that I do not, in order to obtain that which is no longer of use to him, but is to me, in a different landscape. It is no longer of the roads, it goes to a different place. The work begins at a gas station, at the truck drivers\u2019 co-op\u201d. Jos\u00e9 Bechara, from an interview by Gl\u00f3ria Ferreira. Quando a noite encosta na janela<\/em>, 2007. Available at: https:\/\/josebechara.com\/quando-a-noite-encosta-na-janela\/. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2 Artist\u2019s words, from Jos\u00e9 Bechara \u2013 Visto de frente \u00e9 infinito<\/em>. Available at: https:\/\/\nwww.youtube.com\/watch?v=QMNtG0bv-2c.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3 Artist\u2019s words, from a conversation with the author. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4 Jos\u00e9 Bechara, in an interview by Gl\u00f3ria Ferreira. Quando a noite encosta na janela<\/em>, 2007.\nAvailable at: https:\/\/josebechara.com\/quando-a-noite-encosta-na-janela\/.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5 Artist\u2019s words, from a conversation with the author. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 6 Artist\u2019s words, from a conversation with the author.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7 Jos\u00e9 Bechara, in an interview by Gl\u00f3ria Ferreira. Quando a noite encosta na janela<\/em>, 2007.\nAvailable at: https:\/\/josebechara.com\/quando-a-noite-encosta-na-janela\/.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8 Artist\u2019s words from Jos\u00e9 Bechara \u2013 Visto de frente \u00e9 infinito<\/em>. Available at: https:\/\/ www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QMNtG0bv-2c. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 9 Artist\u2019s words, from a conversation with the author.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clarissa DinizRio de Janeiro, 2020Text written for Jos\u00e9 Bechara’s exhibition “Ways of Condemning Certainties” at Marilia Razuk gallery, S\u00e3o Paulo, 2020. Translated by Henrik Carbonnier. It is widely known that a significant part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1477","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1486,"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1477\/revisions\/1486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josebechara.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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