Artists

The painter Claudio Boczon about his work and his artistic vision

How did you find your voice as an artist?

Despite always having a strong inclination for the arts, at only 38 years old in 1998, I met the masters Ronald Simon and Dulce Osinski, who saw the potential of my ideas and encouraged me to pursue my own language. The freedom to produce in the Alfredo Andersen Museum’s Painting Studio allowed me to find and follow my artistic path. This freedom, coupled with an empirical method of trial and error, led me to merge several techniques into a process in which I do not use the brush directly on the support and in which I use trivial materials as a matrix for a kind of monotype. All this added to a concern to always reuse matter and recycle ideas.

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Res non verba, 2016, acrylic, collage on fabric, 40×110 cm

Looking back at your earlier works, what do you think about them today?

Often, seeing initial works, I realize that some ideas are behind, which can still be worked out and developed with a more current look. In this coming and going of the research and production, I sometimes recycle old works, superimposing new layers on those who have already said everything they had to tell me. So when I look at my early works which are not longer with me, I see and respect in them my own artistic trajectory. Those who are still in my studio are always in danger of being transmuted. I have no attachment to my work, even the oldest ones may still be in process.

Has your approach and process changed throughout your artistic career?

After I managed to define a style of my own, I always worked on series of works, like “Shrouds”, “Theogony”, etc. These series are influenced by the moments I lived. As these moments eventually return, these series also come back, it is never a closed process. Eventually, the material I have available to work directs the process, while I test his pictorial possibilities. Of course there are some variations on the way I express myself, but the feeling is the same: a game between concealment and revelation, trial and error.

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Shroud, 2003, acrylic, gouache on wood, 80×100 cm

Is there a particular material that you prefer to work with?

In my work are the fluidity of the paints present and the way it interacts with the other materials and the different supports. Because of this fluidity, the work always results in multiple layers. Already at the beginning of my pictorial research, I chose to use wood as a support because besides being able to obtain it easily, it allows the painting to be reworked several times (sometimes even aggressively, with sandpaper, torch or scraping). What also attracts me to wood is that its material always ends up appearing at work, making the support part of the work.

Can you tell us something about your series “Archaeology of atelier”?

My atelier is in a basement of an old house, and a few years ago I decided to photograph some details of places half hidden in this place. From these photographs I did a work of digital juxtaposition, which resulted in images that refer very much to my work and research in painting. So much so that when I show them for the first time, the people who know my work have found themselves to be pictures of paintings. This experiment unfolded in other aspects of the day-to-day work of the studio, such as photographing details of works in progress or already ready and mixing them, seeking to find something hidden in this microcosm in which I create, a kind of archeology that, instead of revealing what existed, shows what can be if we look with different eyes.

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At the corner, 2005, digital on paper, 35×50 cm

Which artists do you admire?

I must mention, first of all, the Brazilian artists with whom I had the pleasure to learn and admire: Ronald Simon, Dulce Osinski, Dudi Maia Rosa and Leda Catunda.
I have researched a lot within the style of abstract expressionism, Tachism and Art Povera, and I can cite as references: Antoni Tàpies, Wols, Georges Mathieu, Clyfford Still, Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Jannis Kounellis, Arman, Anselm Kiefer and Cezanne.

Claudio Boczon on Singulart:https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/claudio-boczon-518

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