Oscar Bento
About Proyecto Chocolate
"Since I first looked upon the work of Oscar Bento, some summers ago at the IB Isabel Bilbao art gallery in Moraira and later in Jávea (Alicante), I discovered a meticulous artist, neat and quiet, with a strong artistic career, established and prolific, with nearly forty years between brushes, oils, canvases, acrylics ... and also among moulds, castings, cameras, lenses and other materials; for his production is not only painting, but also encompasses sculpture and landscape photography where we appreciate his love for the sea as the coast of Xàbia, his adopted land, is washed by the Mediterranean sea.
Along his painting trajectory and through his personal quest from an artistic perspective, we can perceive his mastery of light, colour and atmosphere; Oscar's interest on reflecting places where he's lived and travelled. Distant and different, these landscapes show us his experiences and sensations, flavours and colours ... to all the nuances that define his creative world and which finally result in this current series devoted to chocolate –also the name of this exhibition-, this rich mixture that comes from the cacao tree, of ancient origin. Cocoa beans, cocoa butter and sugar, along with other ingredients, allowing delicious blends, flavours, textures; something happens in this pictorial series in which lines and colours, densities and compositions lead us from the visual perception to a complete sensorial awareness.
Oscar Bento has worked in this series since 2011; brown colour dominates, along with other pictorial ranges, in varying intensity, in which gold paint appears sometimes as a recall of the golden chocolate wrappers. There is volume in these works that the artist carefully builds with a dense thick material, line by line, with rigor, using a straight line predominance that contributes to the visual balance. The matter application, the acrylic, along with the large format square canvases on which he performs, helps to bring out a surprising result. The direction and the thickness of these lines creating horizontal or vertical compositions, and the shadows they produce, add depth, richness and expressiveness to the work of Oscar Bento."
– Pilar Tébar, Art Historian
