Bruno Pacheco: Various Works (2016–2018)

Overview

Bruno Pacheco is a painter whose work is deeply invested in both the representational and art historical possibilities inherent to the medium. Often creating unique compositions that are amalgams of personal photographs and found images culled from the Internet, the artist approaches painting as an artificial construction that nonetheless offers insight into worlds beyond the picture plane.

For SB14, Pacheco presents ‘Puff! (sissiphilous)’ (2017-18), a new series of six paintings that serves as a wide-ranging study of perspective, representation and simultaneity. Depicting the same image in varying combinations of pastel yellows, oranges, blues, greens, pinks and purples, each canvas provides a distinct take on a common tableau, which, according to the artist, features a man shrouded by a cluster of balloons. Pictured as an illusion of morphing mass and volume, this tableau oscillates between figuration and abstraction, the subject of each painting impermanent as a balloon, which can disappear in a puff! The series examines comprehension as a tenuous, evolving and perpetual endeavour, evoking the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the cruel and egotistical king who was condemned to an eternity of pushing a large boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll down again before ever reaching the top.