Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Sin título [Untitled]

Image caption
JOSÉ DAMASCENO

Sin título [Untitled]

  • 2010
  • Ink (ballpoint pen and marker) on graph paper
  • 40,2 x 29,7 cm each
  • Cat. D_333
  • Acquired in 2010
By:
Isabel Tejeda

In these six drawings on graph paper used for technical drawing, Damasceno uses a ballpoint pen to draw a strand from which branches soon began to appear organically, as if it were the foliage of a plant, intertwining and running wild. Eventually, each one finds its way back by itself, becoming several lines in parallel trajectories, for which the artist draws assistance from the geometric layout of the page. The multiplied line appears to cover the surface of the paper in a perimeter journey in which, like the Simurgh, it finds itself. Up to six times, and with dots of different thickness, Damasceno repeats the drawing in an ordered way, where differences however can be seen, despite the similarity in structure. The tangles that seem impossible to unpick in the central jumble, find in those drawings a simple end that comes out to seek its origin. The work shares some formal aspects with Uma Bruxa by Cildo Meireles — an installation where just one rope begins to form a thick and tangled fabric occupying metres and metres of space with no apparent end. Damasceno bases himself on an abstract concept, although the resulting images are impregnated with possible meanings, open to interpretation. The use of graph paper may hark back to the truncated architectural studies of his youth.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
José Damasceno
Rio de Janeiro 1968

José Damasceno gave up studying Architecture at Santa Úrsula University in his home city of Rio de Janeiro to focus on art full time in 1990. Damasceno considers himself to be self-taught, despite taking some courses at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts in Rio. Damasceno is a child of the dynamic artistic scene in Brazil, with a genealogy that can be traced back to Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Cildo Meireles, but also further back to the cannibalistic artists and their surrealistic connections.

Damasceno explores in a multidisciplinary way the limits of the sculptural form in space, drawing on the infinite possibilities of materials – burlap, wood, concrete, cement, aluminium, thread, fabric, paper, etc. –, and he does so by intervening in the specific sphere of exhibition. In that regard, he analyses the characteristics of the space in its surface or depth (Durante o caminho vertical, Venice Biennial, 2005) and flips it over by questioning its gravity (intervention at the Holborn Library, London, 2014). In this way he changes viewers’ perception, based on their past experience, by proposing new physical experiences. Damasceno seeks to undermine the rigid thinking that arises from preestablished structures.

He has staged solo shows at the Museu de Arte Moderna (Río de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011); the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2003); the Culturgest (Porto, Portugal, 2003); the Georges Pompidou Centre (Paris, 2007); the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2008); and the São Paulo Cultural Centre (2012). He has also exhibited at the biennials of Pontevedra (2000); Mercosur (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2003); Venice (2005 and 2007); and São Paulo (2002). In 1995, he received the UNESCO Prize for Promotion of the Arts in Paris.

Isabel Tejeda

 
«José Damasceno. Paragraphic Studies» (Madrid, 2010). «Weft and Texture and Abstraction» (Barcelona, 2014).
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.