josé patrício | potência criadora infinita: curadoria de paula braga

José Patrício: Potência criadora infinita

Paula Braga

Everything in the world, in its immeasurable variety, consists of a finite number of atoms that recombine to form every flower, every hair, every stone, every piece of plastic. It is an immense quantity of particles of a magnitude far greater than the human intellect can conceive. Huge, unimaginable, but finite. What is infinite is the creative power of combinations between these atoms. We call this the infinite power of Nature.

The artist’s task is to devise a mathematical formula for each composition of pieces within the gray gradient. Thus, he starts a piece in white and goes on to black, and then starts the sequence again, mounted in spiral rows, from the edge to the center of a board. In another work, the same ordering begins in the center and opens itself towards the edges. In yet another piece, the gradient follows the diagonal lines from the vertices of the board to its center, and so on... finitely. Unlike Nature, the time that the artist has to exercise this creative power is finite.

Time is also the element that carries José Patrício’s work from the guidelines defined by the Concrete Art Manifesto, from 1930, to the sensitivity of the 1959 Neoconcrete Art Manifesto. The first, launched in Paris by the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg, advocated that the art of a new era should follow six characteristics, easily identifiable in José Patrício’s work:

1. Art is universal: produced in Pernambuco in the last two years, the compositions presented in this exhibition are as universal as a mathematical formula. They could exist anywhere and at any time;

2. The work of art must be entirely conceived and formed by the spirit before its execution: each arrangement by José Patrício derives from a mentally defined rule which is strictly followed;

Taking a step beyond concretist rationality, every work by Patrício incites questions about time –and this is where there is a dialogue with Neoconcretism. The intellectual excitement that explicit mathematics causes in the viewer, the pursuit for the forming rule of the composition does not matter as much as the sensory effect caused by the optical kinetics of the pieces, and the psychological effect that unfolds in various temporal issues. Or, as stated by the Neoconcrete Manifesto,

A work such as Expansão e retração tonal [Tonal Expansion and Retraction] is mathematically decipherable, as it consists of two squares and opposite movements, one centripetal and the other centrifugal, in the distribution of the pieces of the gray gradient. It is also mathematically understandable that the edgy rows extend themselves, without changing the color of the pieces, for a few more turns at the periphery of the board, resulting in black and white stripes. Here’s the algorithm. But knowing this does not exhaust the work.

The works of the exhibition José Patrício: Infinite Creative Power are beings that demand coexistence to be known. All we can do is to start this relationship, from being to being, with the work, which is extremely independent, self-sufficient, as if it could live well without our eyes. It is certainly not a living organism, but it is an aesthetic organism, which is beyond the mere object. And what gives these works the character of independence and silent existence is precisely the time. They were laboriously built in time, given time from the hand that fit each piece of the puzzle. And now they pulse in a perennial temporality, which has the eternity of mathematics. And we, the viewers, are much more finite than that.

O trabalho de José Patrício se realiza na fronteira entre instalação e pintura, misturando esses gêneros. Sua prática parte do arranjo de objetos cotidianos, tais como dominós, dados e botões, a fim de criar padrões e imagens que podem ter caráter geométrico ou orgânico, ainda que não deixem de resguardar uma familiaridade enigmática com o cotidiano, tendo em vista a possibilidade de se reconhecer aqueles elementos nas composições. Patrício despontou no mundo da arte em 1999, quando criou uma instalação para o convento de São Francisco, em João Pessoa. Na ocasião, o artista utilizou dominós como elemento-chave para muitos dos seus trabalhos. Quando vistos de longe, os padrões observados ganham uma qualidade pictórica (dada sua configuração geral) que contrasta com a natureza gráfica individual de cada peça.

Sob a influência de importantes tendências e movimentos artísticos brasileiros, como a abstração geométrica e o concretismo, Patrício enfatiza o limite sutil entre a ordem e o caos e sugere que mesmo a mais rígida das fórmulas matemáticas possui uma potencial dimensão expressiva. Para o crítico e curador Paulo Sérgio Duarte, o procedimento de acumulação de Patrício nos leva a um “patamar diferente das questões colocadas pelo progresso da ciência e da técnica para a obra de arte. [...] Incorporado, como ponto de partida, o terreno da combinatória matemática, nos encontramos com a combinação das séries, reitero, infinitas nas suas possibilidades. O problema não é mais a reprodução do mesmo; trata-se, agora, de, a partir do mesmo, produzir infinitos outros.”