FRANCESCO JOÃO
SSD
14 MAR – 20 APR 2024
Each of the paintings that make up SSD presents a variation on the seven-segment display, executed in gouache, vinyl and acrylic on raw canvas. Patented in the early 20th century, the seven-segment display - a modular system of linear components that combine to generate digits - became widely used in the 1970s, tied to the increase in availability of cheap LED devices. For João, the ‘SSD’ acts as a visual shorthand for an idea of the future as dreamt from the past, repeatedly rendered in tightly controlled layers of colour. Through their reiteration, the numerals become a formal constraint; a structure used by João to engage the cycles of value and obsolescence embedded in histories of painting.
João’s numbers appear to be embossed: ghostly, mechanical, they belie the painstaking handwork that produced them. Throughout his SSD works, João deftly negotiates between a delicate restraint and an indulgence in the joyful immediacy of his material, as traces of process are made visible through the light speckling of pigment on the painting surfaces and at the edges of each canvas, where layers of gouache are free to bleed and merge.
While the values of the digits and the colours of the ground vary across each work, the composition remains constant; viewed sequentially, the relationship of the display to timekeeping is both emphasised and disrupted as numerals appear to hazily blink on and off at random. The digits become abstractions, rather than representations of value. In discussion of Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara’s infamous date paintings, curator and art historian Anne Rorimer remarks that ‘if, on one level, a date is mute as an image, on another level it stands for the infinite number of events - from the most personal to the most universal - that “take place” on specific dates.’ It is left to the viewer which function - symbolic or purely visual - takes precedence in their experience of Kawara’s dates and, perhaps, João’s numerals. The SSD series employs the repetition and controlled variation of the numeral as a formalist motif just as readily as it proffers an opportunity for the viewer’s own projection of narrative meditation.
Francesco João (b. 1987) lives and works between São Paulo, Brazil, and Milan, Italy. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, Italy. His exhibitions include: Seven Segment Display, Fondazione Zimei, Rome (2023); Sem título, por enquanto, Marli Matsumoto, São Paulo (2023); x_minimal, curated by Friederike Nymphius, Cassina Projects, Milan (2021); 1550 San Remo Drive, Hot Wheels, Athens (2020); Francesco Jo, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019); BRAZIL. Knife in the flesh, PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2018); Donkey Man, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2017); A Terceira Mão, curated by Erika Verzutti, Fortes D’Aloia Gabriel, São Paulo (2017); Everything tends to ascend. Or not., Pivô, São Paulo (2016); Summertime ’78, Kunsthalle São Paulo, São Paulo (2015); Nimm’s Mal Easy, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (2015); Dizionario di Pittura, Galleria Francesca Minini, Milan (2014).
