Artist portfolio 2022–2026
Fossil
Body
Patrick Alex
Painting, memory and archaeologies of the body
View the portfolio ↓Fossil Body · 02
Poetic
principle
Each figure is treated as a surface of inscription. Here, psychological and emotional experiences leave layers that endure, even when words can no longer be found.
My work begins
with the body
My work begins with the body as a site of inscription and with mental health as lived experience. I am interested in the body shaped by psychological and emotional states (tension, withdrawal, vulnerability, protection and resistance) rather than in an ideal form.
The segmented organic forms that constitute the figures act as sediment: layers of experience that accumulate, compress and transform the body.
They are not ornaments, but traces of what remains silently inscribed in matter. The intense backgrounds remove the figures from a specific time and place. The image ceases to illustrate a particular story and instead sustains a presence.
I explore what the mind endures and the body preserves
A fossil is not absence.
It is condensed presence.
Fossil Body refers to a body shaped by deposits of time and experience.
The figure preserves traces without becoming a literal document: it transforms psychological experiences into rhythm, volume and surface.
Painting is a form of excavation: it reveals, conceals, repeats and reorganizes.
The fossil ceases to be an inert remnant. It becomes living memory, a presence condensed in matter.
When does the figure cease to be a portrait and become an archive?
- 01What remains in the body when an experience can no longer find words?
- 02How can we give form to psychological and emotional states that have no image of their own?
- 03How do repetition, color and fragmentation transform silence into presence?
A grammar built in layers
- BodyThe human figure as a territory of psychological and emotional inscription.
- FormRepeated organic forms suggesting cells, sediments and cycles.
- ColorIntense fields that remove the figures from a specific time and place.
- GestureLayers of acrylic paint, contours and contrasts act as a form of excavation.
Archaeologies
of the body
Figures shaped by segmented organic forms.
Each body acts as an archive of psychological and emotional experiences: matter that holds, accumulates, transforms and endures.
Fossil Body · the works
Thirteen bodies,
thirteen archives.
The Origin of Weight
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
The Weight of Skin
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Anatomy of the Trace
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
The Silence That Speaks
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
The Weight of the Scar
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
The Silence of the Body
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Body in Permanence
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Body of Sediment
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Body of Stone
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 60 × 40 cm
Living Scar
Work in progress.
Silence
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Marks of Life
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
The Pain of Silence
2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
Faces as
surface
The face does not confirm identity. It becomes a passage between presence, mask and memory.
Body-Map I
The face holds what language cannot reach
Color, gaze and matter
reorganize presence
Painting as
excavation
- PostureChoose a body capable of holding tension, silence or displacement.
- SuspensionRemove the figure from a narrative setting through a field of color.
- StratificationBuild modules, contours and layers until the skin becomes an archive.
- PresenceStop the process when the figure ceases to illustrate and begins to endure.
From the surface
to the body-object
The research may extend the painted modules into reliefs, sculptures and installations. Modeling by hand, digital modeling and 3D printing will be explored as ways of giving depth to the bodily archive.
Technology is not presented as a technical demonstration. It is part of a poetic process: a way to test what happens when an image of a body acquires volume and occupies space.
Sculpture
Fossil Body
Bronze
Studies of scale and presence in space
Digital simulations. The images above are spatial studies, not records of exhibitions. They explore scale, viewing distance and the relationship between artwork, architecture and the viewer's body.
Art as permanence
and transformation
Patrick Alex is a visual artist born in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, in 1981. His practice uses painting and the human figure to investigate memory, time, the body and systems of transformation.
His interdisciplinary background brings together artistic practice, technology and the creation of solutions. In Fossil Body, these experiences converge in an investigation of the body as an archive, with future developments in painting, objects and digital fabrication.
Technical index
- 01The Origin of Weight2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 02The Weight of Skin2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 03Anatomy of the Trace2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 04The Silence That Speaks2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 05The Weight of the Scar2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 06The Silence of the Body2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 07Body in Permanence2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 08Body of Sediment2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 09Body of Stone2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 60 × 40 cm
- 10Living ScarWork in progress.
- 11Silence2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 12Marks of Life2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 13The Pain of Silence2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 14Feeling2024 · acrylic on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 15Reinventing Oneself2025 · acrylic on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 16Ecstasy2025 · acrylic on canvas · 80 × 60 cm
- 17Cartography of Skin I2026 · acrylic and oil on canvas · 40 × 60 cm
- 18Mineral Red2024 · acrylic on canvas · 60 × 80 cm
- 19Overflow2025 · acrylic on canvas · 60 × 80 cm