breathless
Bruno Pacheco
breathless, 2021
The politics of painting is the foundation of Pacheco’s practice, making painting the principal medium in which Pacheco’s works are conceived and his primary subject. Despite breaking with traditional modes of depiction and display, thus challenging the sacrality and hierarchy tied to classical painting, many of Pacheco’s works also bear a relation to motives derived from classical painting, breathless, 2021 being no exception.
Paolo Veronese, Rape of Europe, 1580-85, oil on canvas, 245 × 310 cm | 96.46 × 122.05 in
Pacheco’s painting is inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, part of which tells the story of Jupiter’s seduction and the capture of Europa. Jupiter (Zeus) the king of gods according to Greek mythology, saw Europa as she was gathering flowers by the sea, and fell in love. He transformed himself into the form of a magnificent white bull and appeared on the sea shore where Europa was playing. Pacheco depicts the motive divided between two paintings, which are moving against each other. On one part of the painting, we see reclining Europa, while on the other she has been already abducted and is riding away with Jupiter. Both paintings are being carried by contemporary figures, challenging thus the linearity of narrative, and the permanence of painting.
Pacheco’s appropriation of the motive, and its reference to the Rape of Europe, (1580-85), a painting by Veronese, at the Musei Capitolini in Rome, look at the construction and appropriation of subject matter throughout history. By borrowing motives from the history of painting, Pacheco looks at how the painterly gesture, the color pallet, composition, or fragmentation influence the construction of narrative and how images are depicted and perceived through time. By abstracting the motive from its initial context, enlarging, and distorting it, by removing some of its elements, or juxtaposing it against another image, Pacheco points to the impermanence of painting, where interpretation and a work’s reading is in constant flux. It is based on an associative chain, where one thing leads to another, and where content is created through rhizomatic structures, rather than through a linear approach to narrative.