Felipe Scovino
Rio de Janeiro, 2022
Text written for José Bechara’s exhibition “Zenith” at Simões de Assis gallery, Curitiba, 2022.

The very particular relationship between José Bechara’s work and constructive languages is something widely explored in the historiography of his work. I would like to pull a thread from this aspect and comment about what I call stains. A pictorial gesture that is invariably juxtaposed by the grid, a trace that significantly accompanies the artist’s work.

Bechara founded a very particular place in the history of paintings of a constructive tendency. The artist starts from a constructive trace to explain a phenomenological experience. In his works, the grid is often already given. For newcomers to José Bechara’s work, his pieces are often produced with used truck tarps. His “canvas”, therefore, is something that already has a history, identity, place and memory. This is also evident when the words printed on the tarps are seen, even if partially, in an effort to ensure that these memories, their original places, cannot be lost. As if that weren’t enough, the artist makes use of operations with metallic emulsion oxidation, which create lines or stains or accentuate these demarcations that were already present in the composition of the canvas exchanged with the truck drivers. And it is precisely this point that I would like to emphasize. Bechara does not only use – as if it weren’t already a lot – signs of geometric abstraction, in particular the grid, but also a trend that has a significant bearing on the panorama of abstraction in Brazil: informalism. The association between informal painting and artists’ gestures, with the product of this action being the stain and the economy of elements that mix with emptiness, spirituality and, in some cases, Taoism left deep marks in Brazilian art history. The fact that Bechara left or barely interfered with the stains that are the result of the tarp’s trajectory, points to an (unconscious) desire for gestuality. I want to point out that Bechara not only thinks like a painter, but acts like one. He doesn’t get carried away by the mechanical activity of simply assuming the painting is done when he has the tarp in his hands. It is his pictorial thought and work that turns the focus on the minutiae. The tarp is given but it needs to be worked on, both in the addition of colors and shapes (like the grids) and in the permanence of certain images that were already present but were not of the order of art. Bechara’s eye is what promotes this transference from the realm of the ordinary, the common, to art, to a terrain of aesthetic and phenomenological discussions. In this sense, the artist focuses on the details that these memories, traces and gestures offer. He says they are his “visual occurrences”. These spots not only compose an abstract atmosphere that is fundamental in his work, but singularly they are records of the painter’s gestures. In many cases, they do not need to be painted with a brush, but chosen (by the eyes of the artist). That’s what Bechara teaches us.

I’d like to point out that informalism was a prominent presence in the visual arts production in two countries with which Bechara has solid relationships: Spain and Brazil. If we had artists like Fayga Ostrower, Tomie Ohtake and Iberê Camargo here, in the European country, the intelligence of Tàpies’ “informal” painting was a legacy for the arts. Especially Iberê and Tàpies have a vigorous and rough brushstroke, a characteristic that is also striking in Bechara’s work. We cannot forget that the tarps come loaded with interferences from the street. There’s something dirty, rough and violent about this material. And, without a doubt, Bechara’s universe is constituted by this aura. But what I’ve been calling a stain ends up building a kind of counterpoint to this noise. The stains belong to the field of softness, to the extent that they can remain autonomous in relation to their surroundings. Because they are in the second or third plane of the painting, in the layer behind the geometric explorations, they become less visible, scandalous or noisy. It’s as if another story was taking shape amid the geometric explorations and the noise of the roads and all the louder load that the tarps carry. I like to think about how his work operates stories, memories and gestures that are apparently distinct but that intertwine with one another in the end.

As stated above, his work undergoes a high concentration of energy, especially because of the origin, of what the work is made of (the tarps). And the transposition of this energy can also be seen, more recently, through the image of large circles, invariably red or blue, located in the center of the paintings as in Red Zeniths (2021). They are not just circles – whole or not – but the revelation of a centrifugal force that, like a dynamo, seems to create vitality, energy and movement for these paintings. If before – and still continue – the grids spread over the canvases, expanding their forms in order to show their elasticity and strength, now the image of centrifugation leaves no doubt over the latent power state that these paintings unleash.

Another point of, shall we say, material vibration in his work is the process of marking the tarps with adhesive tape. The painting and oxidation in the demarcated space and the subsequent decal of these tapes seem to leave that place vibrating due to the emulsion and paint applied there. Furthermore, oxidation itself is already a choice for keeping the pictorial space in constant transformation. A density is created in the place where it is applied, which does not let us forget that his painting has the pulse of life.

In this sense, the title of the exhibition was not chosen by chance: Zênite (Zenith). It is yet another fact that reinforces not only the atmosphere of energy that these works possess, but singularly the capacity of attraction, oscillation, resistance and propagation that is emitted. No element remains static, as everything is in constant transformation. The grids float across the surface, the different layers reinforce the idea of transience, not to mention the centrifugal force that seems to move and simultaneously suck matter into energy. And the most evident in this set when talking about change, is the oxidation process. As a biological experience, we witness the play of forces and presence that the copper or steel emulsion, the use of steel wool and the corrosion derived from this process perform on the surface of the canvas. Oxidation creates graphic and chromatic interference zones that act continuously and imperceptibly. No element remains static, as everything is in constant transformation. The grids float across the surface, the different layers reinforce the idea of transience, not to mention the centrifugal force that seems to move and simultaneously suck matter and transform it into energy. What becomes most evident in this set when talking about change is the oxidation process. Like a biological experience, we witness the play of forces and presence that the copper or steel emulsion, the use of steel wool and the corrosion derived from this process perform on the surface of the tarp. Oxidation creates graphic and chromatic interference zones that act continuously and imperceptibly.

Another recent aspect in his work is the presence of more open colors. In one painting (Untitled, 2022), there is a huge red circle occupying a large part of the work. Hovering over a weave of oxidized vertical stripes, the circle emits a pulsating and extremely attractive reddish light. And not only that. The red color, by its size and intensity, seems to attract all the attention and energy to its center, when the work already has another force field, which are the oxidized stripes themselves. This is an example of how Bechara’s painting negotiates its distinct ranges of movement and energy consumption. There is something violently seductive about this maneuver.

Finally, the ensemble of these works shows the synergistic character of a force that puts several elements in tension. Everything that makes up his paintings is constantly pulsing, vibrating and expanding with endless potency.