In making his paintings, Delson Uchôa uses an artisanal process that composes the artwork’s body and evinces its materiality, an inherent characteristic of this artist’s investigation. Through a combination of resin and pigments, Uchôa produces “paint skins” through the accumulation and drying of these materials, which are then “grafted” onto geometric figures. By placing layers of skins one atop the other, he gives life to his paintings/objects, as though they were true graftings, a metaphor that harks back to his medical training. For this exhibition, Delson Uchôa applied this methodology in a new way to natural Brazilian fibers. The reed known as the piripiri – found in marshy regions along the Rio São Francisco and considered the Brazilian papyrus – along with palm species such as the ouricuri, the carnaúba, the titara and the catolé, are some of the materials used by the artist, who takes the woven fiber mats as a basis for new paintings.
Considered a researcher of color, Delson Uchôa continues to include brightness as an important element in his work. His paintings convey the sunny stridence of the plant life of Alagoas, while also making chromatic allusions to indigenous feather art. This interaction of light with the material is now applied to works on a larger scale, sewn together into sophisticated geometric patterns that give rise to contrasting optical phenomena. For the artist, “the painting speaks to the eyes that hear,” therefore, his work communicates through this conceptual and material hybridism, which combines Amerindian aesthetics and Brazilian identity with the colonizing aspects of the European schools.
