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PIERRE BONNEFILLE:
MEDITATIONS ON LIGHT
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We are honoured to welcome to KALPA Galleries the acclaimed French multidisciplinary artist Pierre Bonnefille (Saint-Quentin, 1958), and to present his series Bronze Paintings and Furoshiki works on paper as part of our thoughtful art selection.
With his great admiration and knowledge of Japanese culture, Bonnefille's art vision is deeply imbued with the values and philosophical cornerstones of the Asiatic countries, the destinations of his long research. His paintings recall nature, terrestrial, aquatic, or celestial landscapes, as well as reflecting ancestral gestures and traditions. The overall corpus of his work explores notions of memory and immanence, metamorphosis, transcendence and physicality.
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“I look for an effect of evanescence and mist from the imagination of my memory.”
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Capturing light in the Bronze Paintings
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Bronze powder and silver and gold foils are the key mineral pigments that distinguish the landmark series of abstract and polychrome Bronze Paintings, followed by the creation of the art installation The Meditation Room presented for the first time at PAD London in 2016 and Museum Guimet in Paris in 2021.
Transposing the mental state felt while contemplating waterscapes, the whole series is inspired by the reflections of light on water and by the constant movement of its flow offering blurred and shimmering effects. In these paintings, there are references to the important role that the moon, and moon-viewing in particular, has in Japanese art and society, comprising the spiritual energy that arises when looking at the reflection of our satellite on the water or in a mirror.
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“I began collecting and observing specimens of native rocks that then become powder and take on a new life through my process. I like to invent materials according to my visual inspirations, but also touch, look and especially through light.”
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Like an alchemist, Bonnefille pursues a scrupulous study of the materials he uses: natural pigments, minerals, limestone, lava, and marble powders are carefully distilled and selected during his travels around the world, from the Bahamas to Hong Kong, Japan to Italy. The artist constantly selects materials here, an object there, and pigments from everywhere, ranging from old fabrics to precious stones, minerals such as black volcanic sand from Bali, Terre Verde Brentonico, a green pigment from Venice, or Rouge de Falün, a brick-red paint used for the facades of houses in Sweden.
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"The Meditation Room is a universal space where everyone is invited to enter. It welcomes all sensibilities, it goes beyond a belief, does not require any particular code or ritual, it is pure energy. "
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A unique light radiates from the gold of the Bronze Paintings composing the monumental circular space of the Meditation Room. Placing his works as if temple walls, Bonnefille establishes a physical and spiritual continuum from the surface of the ground to the surface of his canvases, embracing Rothko's challenge of uniting the languages of architecture and painting. Their texture creates the illusion of perpetual movement, making the overall installation's contours sublime. In order to avoid the artificiality of city lights, Meditation Room is lit by candles, encouraging the visitors to wander and become immersed in the poetic environment, entering into contact with both ancient times and their inner vital force.
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"Under his hand, the bronze material stretches, liquefies and freezes in evanescent patterns on huge abstract canvases. An abstraction that finally invites the viewer to project their own imagination onto it, carried by the energy of the dichotomy between a subtle floating of forms and an apparent force of pictorial gesture."
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Ancient gestures in contemporary drawings
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Memories of landscapes and encounters inform Bonnefille's artistic vision. Moved by an emotional experience in an antique shop in Kyoto where he assisted in a succession of mastered gestures, in 2016 the artist created a new series of works on paper inspired by the Japanese traditional art of Furoshiki, retracing in an artistic performance of the ancient and functional gesture of fabric folding and knotting.
The generous and opaque texture of the individual works accurately transcribes the precise gestures of the artist who recreates in two-dimensions the three-dimensional ritual. Like a dance, the artist transcends his own present and enters a state of mindfulness, in which his body becomes an intermediary between his energy and the paper.
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"Artists come from one country, but in spirit, they inhabit many others. [...] Bonnefille has long resided in Asia, in the Far East (China, Korea, Japan), which has led nomadic poets to the understanding of the Orient."
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Throughout his career beginning in 1985, Bonnefille’s work has been internationally exhibited, from the PAD London in 2016, to the personal exhibitions at the Musée Horta in Bruxelles, in 2018 and at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques - Guimet, in 2021. Among his most prestigious commissions, at the beginning of the 1990s, he created a large red fresco on the walls of the Café Marly under the arcades of the Louvre, in Paris. He now collaborates with luxury brands such as Aman, Cartier, Hermès and Loro Piana among others, engaging in projects across Europe, Asia and the US. In 2010, the artist was appointed Maître d’Art by Frédéric Mitterrand, who was French Ministry of Culture back in the time, and in 2020, the prestigious Academy of Architecture awarded him the Médaille des Métiers d’Arts from the Paul Sédille Foundation, rewarding a career spanning 35 years as an artist-explorer.
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Photography: Luca Bonnefille, courtesy of The Artist and Olga Niescier, courtesy of KALPA
Quotes: Pierre Bonnefille and Thierry Grillet
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