José Bento

Brazilian visual artist, lives and works in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Marked by the nature of his carved trunks, resting on top of each other, Bento has been working since the 1980s at the intersection between typical sculpture materials such as wood and metal, but also takes flight through moving images, photography and drawing, in addition to creating dialogues with architecture through silent interventions, construction and deconstruction of objects, interactive installations and performances, using mainly materials such as wood - commonly from renovations and demolitions -, porcelain and glass. The mastery of the material is José's first concern, he seeks a harmony between the rigidity and the movements of the wood grain. The volume and balance that interest him in sculpting, his field of work, also involve a pictorial line and a space-time intervention as a source of research. As an example, we have his production from the 90s, in Belo Horizonte, where after his first solo show he initiated the discussion of the relationship between bi and three-dimensional planes based on models and objects built with popsicle sticks; at Casa Guignard, in Ouro Preto, he addresses the issues surrounding the materials of his artistic production, presenting sculptures made from secular tree trunks from the Atlantic Forest, which have been listed as heritage and, in 2000, he presented the work Chão, a site -specific which the material overlaps layers of springs and simulates an experience of instability when walking. This work was recently presented at the 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial, occupying an area of 627 m2 of the Biennial Pavilion. The artist relates the set of his work to an attempt to intervene in the history belonging to the elements he sculpts. “Death and life work in the same space, because the inside of the wood ceases to exist. If you look up the word ‘wood’ in any dictionary, you will find a definition linked to something dead. Death comes from within, from the middle of the wood ", explains Bento about his obsession with the material.

José Bento presented his first solo show in 1989 and received the Brasília Plastic Arts Award, shortly afterwards at the 12th National Salon of Plastic Arts, in Rio de Janeiro, 1992. In 2022, he participated in the 13th Mercosul Biennial and in the group show “A Trama da Terra que Treme”, at A Gentil Carioca in São Paulo. In 2019, he participated in the collective exhibition “Brasil! Focus on Contemporary Brazilian Art”, at the Museo Ettore Fico, in Turin, Italy. In 2016, he took part in the “32nd Bienal de São Paulo - Incerteza Viva”, São Paulo; and in “Brasil, Beleza?!” at the Beelden aan Zee Museum of Modern Sculpture, in Den Haag, Holland. In 2015, he opened the solo show “Chão de Estrelas” at A Gentil Carioca gallery, in Rio de Janeiro. In 2014 he was the artist exhibited at “Solo Presentation” by A Gentil Carioca at Art Basel.

His works are part of the collections of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Pampulha Art Museum, Belo Horizonte and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro.

CV