Christian Bonnefoi

[Title] Christian Bonnefoi
[Date] December 13 (Friday), 2013 – February 28 (Friday), 2014

The constellation of the body of painting
Christian Bonnefoi

The exhibition is composed of artwork chosen from my personal series and it showcases work done since 1974. All of these are of my own creation, which I have personally named: Babel, Eureka, Fioretti, Ludo and Composition, machines et diagramme. Seen as a whole, the exhibition can be considered a ʻcarefully selectedʼ retrospective. While the objects are generally quite formal, the ideas and concepts used, are given life by using markedly different approaches, including: drawings and designs used as a structure (Babel); the sketchbook used to explore techniques (Fioretti); the painting as a medium used to craft the condensation of various materials (Eureka); the collage used as an visual-spacial work effort (Ludo and Composition of Le Zodiaque au-dessus de Ginza (The Zodiac over Ginza)); the final touches are assembled within the hallway passages of the art gallery, using various images and words as concepts (Machine and Diagramme)
Each of these instances evolve in a parallel fashion, irregularly and non-hierarchically. They share the primary role that created the mood and movement found within the lines of thought while giving support to develop the primary role and inspiration. My guiding principle is closer to Marcel Proust’s stream of consciousness or line of thought, than the unwound line laid by the Greek myth of Arianne and the Minotaur. This leading thread is the guiding light or more precisely, the diaphanous. It has no background, form nor shape. In a sense it is an act. As Ficino states: “In all truth, light constitutes the first form of the first (geometric) body. It being perfect, not in its distinctive act of being an inactive quality, but rather as a very strong and effective act. So effective that it extends in an instant across all things, without it being separated from its own source.”
Exploring this has helped me understand how the overall operation, gestures and attitudes that one becomes engaged in when putting into motion the creation of a piece of art, cannot be be used to define or represent it as a whole. Its representation merely skims the visible surface. The conditions that support and allow it to attain the stage of visibility, its exposed mode, in some way, somehow remains behind, invisible, or on the fringe of visibility. This represents the great discovery of the first part of the twentieth century. Be it avant-garde, as shown by Moholy-Nagy or “Classicism” as done by Picasso. The most often cited example is the socles or base support structures of Brancusi, which are simple and of convenience for the presentation of the sculpture. They melt into the sculpture to gradually become one with it.
From minimalism there will even be an attempt to replace the way in which art is exposed and presented. In regard to technique, conceptual art, breaks down these norms of presentation to the point where it goes beyond the concept of painting, and makes it unnecessary and unproductive
The end result of this movement is a fusion that has paradoxical characteristics. I take this movement and oppose it to the metonymic operation inherited from the collage method. In maintaining these contradictory characteristics and with the hope of breaking boundaries, set forth prior to this during the avant guard movement, I have sought to find supplementary purposes and roles in the way of presenting and exposing art. These new purposes and roles of presentation bring forth another way of sustaining the visual form. They experiment on the formal methods of presenting, but serve to transform and eventually modify the presentation strategy. Not only is the method of presenting untethered by the shape and form of the object, but its shape takes on a different function and purpose. For example, I have used in the exhibition, particular elements that create what I call ‘spacial moderators’. These elements are for example, a thin, silklike tissue paper, placed between the wall and the objects presented (landscapes, postal cards, drawings or collages …). All of these, of course have a formal dimension but also help introduce and integrate the function given to the object by giving it a frame and tableau, or, inversely, giving it the attribute of an over-determined function, where the object surprises you and is cast into an independent, free and migrating space.
It is only afterwards that I realized how closely related the idea was to that of Moholy-Nagy’s “space modulator “. His space modulator, however, has more to do with time conversion, which I write about in my description of Eureka, along with the experience of spacial pluralities used with Moholy-Nagy’s “Light Space Modulator”.
What I call “Machines” are put together with other works on the same wall, which in a sense explains the technical experience, conceptual or otherwise, necessary for the production of a form.
These intermediate or transitive objects; these productive forces brought into relationship with their product, oeuvre, tableaux and collages; are experienced for a period of time in which the work itself becomes only a moment, even if it is intended as the point of emphasis. This difference, or division, happens on another level, once the oeuvre has been considered and absorbed visually by the spectator. In other words, the sum of emotions that emerge from what is visible and available as an imaginary sequence taken outside the context of the place where it was generated. It takes on another meaning, once one takes the time to consider all the opportunities and possibilities associated with the machinery.
The selected and collected pieces, in a similar space, become a kind of landscape “where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go”. The topic of trees and leaves, rustling and runoff, sky and stars, a particular Zodiac borrowing Gnostic currency or fantastic bestiary Borges drawing new constellations, such that Horse or the guitar, or the Acrobat Cloud, … or Rake : visiting with Sylvie the Daisen-in temple, wihin the Daitokuji walls, we were greeted by a monk called Soen Ozeki, who sang in a loud voice, the first verse of the Marseillaise. We were stunned, since we were so far from a Benedictine monastery! He was signing his book on the art of gardening and raking. Inspired by the moment, I came up with a great melancholic poem:
“At this time I touch upon fall’s marrow,
Where we must make use of the rake and hoe
To gather again as the wetlands flow… “
This digression seemed to fall aptly. I questioned myself on an idea. If the West has made the landscape one of the essential genres of painting, the Japanese tradition have pushed it even further by given it a true body and flesh. The reason being that in Japan the use of living objects that modulate using different time scales, ranging from the towering rocks, cosmic time, rocks of eternity, the fragility of moss, which is similar to the time we live in, one of the ephemeral , temporary and circular concatenation of life and death under the eye of the Buddha of Compassion. The garden of Daisen-in , for example, was created in 1509 by Kogaku-Zenji : since then, it has developed and changed. These changes occur on two levels. The monks who come and go, and the natural flow of the seasons. According to Philostratus , the first painters were G*ds , who laid different colors for each season. The reason was to distinguish, but also to give an attribute to time. A time that elapses at the sudden, quick moment when spring blooms. Autumn on the other hand, represents the slowing down and deterioration of time and color.
The combined movement and action of humans and nature is best illustrated within the work of art and I have tried to explain, perhaps awkwardly, in the lines above.
The painting, like the garden, is a constantly changing process where the finishing touches and the fact that it is shown as an object on a wall, does not mean that the feelings and ideas it embodies do not go beyond. They continue their journey, transforming themselves into other mediums, other bodies, moving to other places.
Perhaps this is what Walter Benjamin was alluding to when he talked about “afterlife.”

Maison Maison Hermès
Hideyuki Nakayama

The Maison Maison Hermès is another maison constructed within the glass block-encompassed Maison Hermès building by Renzo Piano. A thin, large wall—measuring a maximum 6m tall, 50m long, and 41 mm thick—stands in an open-ceiling space on the 8th and 9th floors of the building. The wall is like a folding screen traversing a rectangular room, thereby creating within a space filled with homogeneous natural light places featuring an array of sizes, contours, and brightness. The area also features a garden in the front, a hall, an alcove, a corridor, and a garden in the rear. Thus, another imaginary maison emerges within the abstracted Maison Hermès room, making it possible for a building constructed on a box-shaped site to accommodate a diversity of interior and exterior spaces.

Christian Bonnefoi’s artwork—which is either displayed on a transparent gauze canvas fitted in a wooden frame or displayed unframed, directly pinned to the wall—challenges the presence of the frame that articulates the picture and its context. Such artwork would not only make the wall literally an exhibit wall but also transform it into the canvas itself, the wall thereby becoming the frame that articulates the space. Such a transformation might even suggest that the space has turned into Bonnefoi’s own maison.

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