One has a sense, looking at one of his compositions, that the amount of surface devoted to black and white areas is roughly equal. By limiting himself to horizontal and vertical shapes and working with bands of black or white which appear to be about the same width, Rocha sets up an initial impression of regularity. Closer examination, however, upsets these expectations. The bands in fact may vary slightly in width, black and white shapes which appear to be identical turn out to vary subtlely, and it quickly becomes clear that this is an intuitive, rather than mechanically generated geometry. A further conflict between order and irregularity is played out on the painting's surface.
White areas have a smooth finish while black ones are painted with broad systematic strokes.
This tension between the appearance of stability and an under stated irregularity seems very much in sync with the way that the words function in the paintings. Simple, basic words turn out to be far more ambiguous than they originally appear. Because of the skillful way that Rocha weaves these words out of both black and white shapes, some can have multiple readings. Shot, for instance, might also be seen as Shit. The final result of all these ambiguities is to emphasize a theme of quiet subversion.