Between the cities of Rio de Janeiro and London, Beto Fame’s painting unfolds as a walk without a map — guided by chance, active listening, sensitive gaze and a sustained visual enquiry. Rather than anchoring his practice in fixed styles or formulas, his pictorial language embraces movement: references, affections, atmospheres, and rhythms that permeate his urban and personal experience. The elements that compose the paintings in this exhibition appear to have been gathered over time — like flashes of memory intertwined with visual and affective impressions.
Born and raised in the Tijuca neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Beto found in its streets his first school: crossroads, walls, encounters, and collaborations shaped his perception of spatiality, colour, and the symbolic strength of the cultural elements embedded in everyday life in the city. His engagement with painting began on the city’s walls. As a teenager, he began to collect visual fragments rooted in his experiences on the streets — a process that would later give rise to The Shangrilá series, where mirages — or vantage points seen from his mother’s home — operate as devices for structuring the image.
From 2022 onwards, following experiments with collage techniques, a significant shift emerged in his approach to composition. The paintings, once centred on the monumentality of objects, began to open space for less immediate forms of signification. Collage procedures were integrated into his pictorial gestures: elements displaced from other contexts function as mobile signs within visual narratives inviting and unsettling the viewer’s gaze.
Perhaps the most striking transformation lies in his palette. The formerly vibrant tropical colours have given way to deeper greens and earthy tones, as though absorbing the mistier rhythm of a new landscape. Luminous skies yield to London’s fog — and with it, new elements quietly infiltrate the artist’s visual repertoire. The planes become more organic, while tropical fruits emerge as symbols of longing and belonging — remnants of an origin that continues to resonate, even from afar.
Ultimately, Beto Fame’s painting reveals itself as a visual form of poetry. Much like his habit of listening to music while painting, his works are composed like chords: layers that oscillate between figuration and abstraction, between gesture and pause. His poetics are shaped by an expansive and self-transformative nature. Artist and artwork come into being through movement — a trajectory guided by attentiveness to affect, openness to what arises along the path, and a singular curiosity he shares, generously, with the public.
Found on the Way, more than a title, offers a key to understanding a practice in which each image becomes a living trace of all that has been crossed.
Text written by Professor Shannon Botelho, PhD
Curator / Rio, Brazil
