June 2021

“FLORESTA NEGRA” - by João Alexandrino aka Jas, featuring a completely new body of work developed during the first lock down in 2019

"Floresta Negra” | João Jas [PT] Individual Exhibition

Black forest arose as a nascent way to solve a permeating anxiety. The attack formed a more primitive shot where the brushes no longer matter. The gesture starts to come straight out of a thick and honeyed ink tube to a rough and brown support that symbolizes the earth or the bark of a tree.

The objective goes through an experience similar to a visual prayer of repetition and modular organization, whose elements use traction and compression in order to provide stability and resistance.

Black forests work as mandalas, or chords that flutter energetic waves that alternate in different sensations establishing an analogy with tensegrity, where motor neurons and sensory neurons complement each other, like geodesic domes, attributing the great characteristic of stability and mechanical resistance.

These Forests are contextualized as a measure for a lighter, perhaps anxiolytic path of everyday life.

About

The Portuguese Artist João Alexandrino, also known as JAS, was born in Porto / Portugal in 1981.

His work is developed in different fields and artistic activities, such as installation, performance, video, painting, scenography and drawing. He was one of the founding members of Espaço INCUBADORA [2002-2007] in Vila Nova de Gaia [Portugal], where he presented permanent installations / exhibitions. He currently develops several individual projects and co-authored with other artists, with video and drawing in real time as the main elements in his work. In 2013 he founded the project C A I X A Arte Contemporânea with the Artist Manuela Pimentel.

Within the scope of other projects, his work has also been shown in other countries such as Hamburg [Germany], Rouen [France], Barcelona [Spain], ​​Norway, São Paulo [Brazil], Maputo [Africa], among others.

Exhibits individually and collectively since 2000.

He directed several short films and experimental videos.

Currently his work is represented in the Berardo collection.