Ben Brown Fine Arts proudly presents an exhibition of new works by Caio Fonseca, an enigmatic tour de force in the abstract painting world.  After two exhibitions at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London, Caio makes his first foray onto the Asian scene with Ben Brown in Hong Kong. An exciting exemplar of contemporary abstract painting, Caio’s new works like a release of Apollonian exuberance, begin as checkerboards of light, broad stripes, and end in smooth symmetrical swathes of colour.
 
Caio Fonseca’s bold, lyrical abstractions arise from an eccentric process that involves as much cool redaction as painterly process. For the artist, as a classically trained pianist, painting holds emotions akin to those felt listening to a concerto. Bathed in deep fleshy peach, marine blue, and emerald green tones, the paintings spontaneous configurations mime the rhythms founds in musical scores. Paintings in which thick, drab fields of paint are scratched and scraped, interrupted by elongated curling shapes of bars.

“I’ve chosen to speak with paint and not writing, not film etc. What I have to say is very idiomatic to the potential of paint to speak in its own language… We seem to agree that music is capable of speaking for itself and a helpful invitation to my work might be to allow yourself to listen to the painting in that way," says the artist.
 
Fonseca developed his unique approach to painting through an unorthodox style, one that impresses the importance of the relationship between mentor and student.  He studied intensively for five years in a constant state of creativity under Uruguayan painter Augusto Torres in Barcelona, Spain. As studies progressed, the lessons became intuitive and his works began to originate from an internal dialogue. This educational isolation enabled Fonseca to cultivate his unique, individual approach to painting.
 
The time Fonseca spent in Europe propelled him to embrace, rather than reject, twentieth-century modernist traditions. This is seen in the slight pictorial references to artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró.  His work demonstrates a belief in the blatant physicality of paint and its relationship to the rhythm and expression which flows out of an artist.  Fonseca spent eight years travelling after his formal education, finding and developing his own personal aesthetic language, and has subsequently continued refining his landscapes of pure abstraction to new levels of spatial understanding.

“Caio is a prodigy among prodigies; he’s a one man band.” – Martin Amis