Autofagia, corrupio no olhar: Delson Uchôa

One of the characteristic processes in Delson Uchôa's painting is the establishing of a dialogue with his own work through re-encounters with his previous production. "Painting is a conversation for the eye that knows how to listen," says the artist, who from time to time focuses on a certain piece, begun years before, thus activating it again. In Autofagia, Corrupio no Olhar (Autophagy, Turning One's Gaze), his second exhibition at Zipper, the set of six large-format paintings on show developed at different intervals over four decades, from the 1980s to the present.

The piece Quaradouro (Bleacher) is one that best expresses the idea of autophagy, as the artist has come to call such a process. The title of the painting refers to the place where clothes are exposed to the sun to "quarar" (bleach); in the centre of the canvas there is another painting, done in 1989 on a cloth-diaper, surrounded by clothes pegs. Delson has made erasures, additions and enlargements to the painting based on the central figuration of the piece during three different moments (1998, 2003 and 2018). "I never abandon anything in my production. These pieces are the pure expression of how I feed myself, in an autophagic process," he says.

The term originates in medicine, an area of the artist's training that exerts great influence on the logic of his work, and refers to a mechanism of natural regeneration in body cells. Adapted for his pictorial practice, autophagy materializes as multi-layered paintings, pointing to a vast cultural hybridity and memories of different periods.

In the pieces gathered for this selection, it is possible to identify some of the artist's starting points: patterns, geometric forms, and recurrent tonalities in Delson's production from the 1980s. The variety of materials is also present - canvas, wool, cotton, suede, wood, plastic and metal become entwined with the acrylic paintings as testimonies of an archive of objects collected by the artist.

The attitude of developing new pieces from the rescue of the past represents, paradoxically, a reiteration of their own present. "For me, there is no clear end to the pieces. I redo, recompose, and amplify. This is a very unique process of reencounter. While the pieces remain within my reach, I do not deprive myself of revisiting them," he says.

Autofagia, Corrupio no Olhar opens on September 20 and runs until October 27.