Elvire Bonduelle — The Rotating Painting Show

Exhibition

Installation, painting

Elvire Bonduelle
The Rotating Painting Show

Past: October 15 → December 19, 2015

The starting point of Elvire Bonduelle’s Rotating Paintings is a visual motif which is as simple and factual as possible: the curved line formed by a curtain blowing out of the rectangle of a window. From this vision, the artist has created a series of ruler drawings that have been characteristic of her production for a few years. She then extracts this motif from its initial context in order to submit it to a set of operations that have led to hard edge abstract paintings, in an accepted filiation with the master of the genre, Ellsworth Kelly. The result is visually very efficient: the eye gets lost in the abyss of darkness, while the whiteness brings it back to the surface of the artwork. The artist has revealed the impact of this striking contrast through a set of paintings that stand out because of their mode of presentation: their fate is not about being immutably presented as a line on the white wall of the gallery but rather to be arranged in changing shapes (triptych, quadriptych), each combination offering a different vision to the eye. Indeed the gallery owner is commissioned by the artist—just like a performer would be—to operate a rotation of their artworks, preferably unbeknownst to the spectator, in order to defy them, test their attention span but also to let doubt interfere with the whole process.


The aim of the prank being played here is to bring the spectator to think about what they are seeing, to train their eyes. It is an issue that was already tackled by Elvire Bonduelle during her previous exhibition at galerie laurent mueller, « Salle d’attente III », during which the artist said: ‘everything is here: quite often we don’t see anything. We force our eyes, by absolutely wanting to see here, now, in three minutes or thirty seconds.’ However Elvire Bonduelle’s point does not end here and other rotating paintings that abandon the hard edge aesthetic but take on curved motifs extracted from reality are testament to that. These artworks show the gradual wearing out of the paint brushed away on the surface to be painted. The brush is run from the top edge of the canvas towards its bottom right or left edge, until the pictorial substance runs out. Then the brush is being dipped and run again in order to recreate the same movement.

Elvire Bonduelle’s Rotating Paintings re-establish in a new way the formal practices of some artists from the Concrete Art, BMPT or Support-Surface movements. She uses pertinence and humour but also this false indolence that characterises her so well and triggers a reflection on painting, the act of painting, and the conditions of presentation of the artworks.

Domitille d’Orgeval
  • Elvire Bonduell — The Rotating Painting Show Opening Thursday, October 15, 2015 at 6 PM
Galerie Laurent Mueller Gallery
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75, rue des Archives

75003 Paris

T. 01 42 74 04 25

www.galerielaurentmueller.com

Arts et Métiers
Filles du Calvaire
République
Temple

Opening hours

Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 7 PM
Other times by appointment

The artist

  • Elvire Bonduelle