Die Schweizer Künstlerin Louise Bonnet testet die Grenzen des menschlichen Körpers, dessen Dehnbarkeit sie in ihren Gemälden auf schmalem Grat zwischen Schönheit und Hässlichkeit ins Real-Surreale treibt. Üppige Torsi und knollenförmige Extremitäten bevölkern ihre Bilder, eine faszinierende Schau von seltsam geformten Nasen, Brustwarzen und perückenartigen, meist blonden Haarhaufen – eine Art von Glamour, die immer unvollständig zu bleiben scheint. Das Geschlecht ist mal übertrieben und mal völlig vernachlässigt, was das Geheimnis dieser Figuren betont. Zwischen cartoonhafter Fröhlichkeit und der virtuosen Formalität moderner Skulptur dehnen und strecken sie sich in unbequemen Posen in einer endlosen Zeitschleife. Flavia Frigeri beschreibt diese Bilder in ihrem Essay als Dämmerung der Schönheit im Lichte der kunsthistorischen Erinnerung. „Durch ihre eklektische Art der figurativen Malerei“, schließt sie, „fordert Bonnet die normativen ästhetischen Ideale heraus, mitsamt den dazugehörigen Vorstellungen von Identität und Repräsentation.“

THE TWILIGHT OF BEAUTY
(Auszug aus dem Essay von Flavia Frigeri)

Speaking of the mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Roland Barthes described the artist’s hyperbolic painting as “an art of fabrication.” In Barthes’ words: “When Arcimboldo intends to signify the head of a cook, a peasant, a reformer, of Summer, Water or Fire, he ciphers the message. Ciphering means to hide and not hide simultaneously.” By framing Arcimboldo’s work in these terms, Barthes complicates our understanding of the artist’s oeuvre beyond an amusing curiosity. The odd Arcimboldesque “double image,” in fact, comes to embody a tension between encipherment and decipherment that conjures the presence of multiple levels of reading. Perception is called into question here and a kind of mental whiplash is demanded of the viewer. Bonnet’s paintings operate under a similar premise in that they also revel in “an art of fabrication.” Meaning is deciphered, as what you see eschews literal legibility. This is particularly true when it comes to the figures’ assertive physical presence. Oversized and overactive, they engender a convergence: of gravitas and cartoonishness, of emotional integrity and ridiculousness, of beauty and ugliness. Borrowing once again Barthes’ words: “The message is hidden because the eye is distracted from the sense of the whole by the sense of the detail.”

Bonnet’s featureless heads neglect the face’s deep-rooted physiognomic tyranny, while simultaneously reveling in a condition of incompletion which enhances their enigmatic character. Her arresting parade of tragicomic beings commingles elements of the beautiful and the grotesque. The goofy countenances of many of her characters suggest a cartoonish alarm and yet, for all their outrageous humor, Bonnet’s paintings are indebted to long-standing European and American pictorial traditions. Fragments of art-historical memory are, in fact, called to mind by the lusciously tactile forms, which hark back to a system of highlights and shadows reminiscent of Old Master paintings. This feeling of old-fashioned pictorial techniques and stylistic forms is enhanced by Bonnet’s choice of oil painting, and even more so by the depthless dark backgrounds against which many of her figures are set. To a certain extent, it could be argued that the artist follows in the postmodern legacy of artists such as Glenn Brown and George Condo, who elaborate a contemporary lexicon of art-historical cross-references. In Bonnet’s case the material qualities of Old Master paintings are conflated with traces of surreal thinking, mostly visible in the profoundly compelling oddness of the characters and their settings. Most significantly, however, Bonnet’s ludic extravagance wantonly provokes a sense of bewilderment in the viewer’s interpretation of these works.

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In Zusammenarbeit mit Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London