José Bento presents at the Octógono da Pinacoteca a sensorial project that considers the relationship with space, time and memory, attributing new meanings to his main working material, wood.
In the site-specific work, the artist recalls that every city, as a result of human actions in the past and present, is a receptacle of the stories and life cycles that settle and inhabit it.
The region where the Pinacoteca is located was, in the past-present of the city of São Paulo, known as Caminho de Guaré. Destined for Minas Gerais, the tropeiros traveled a passage that existed even before the arrival of the European element in these lands: traveling the Caminho de Guaré means understanding the space we are in as a place of consciousness, recognizing the indigenous presence in this territory and understanding ourselves. also as part of this intricate plot of history.
THE WOOD
The connection between the layers of history and the different states of wood, a material constantly present in the artist's productions, highlights the complexity and cyclical aspect of our own existence.
The exhibition space becomes a board where a delicate harmony is formed: the beans, which are at the same time food and seed, create the correspondence between the cosmos and the earth, the mounds of energy and disintegrated matter exude particles of smell and memories of the trees that once were and continue to be, albeit in another configuration, and the air, which surrounds them all, guards the entrances and fortifies this path through time.
“José Bento: Caminho de Guaré” is curated by Lorraine Mendes and Jochen Volz.
