“SINE”
Susan Bonvin’s paintings and related visual pieces
have always been distinguished by the rigour of her enquiry. It would be acceptable to term her work abstract,
in the sense that it is clearly non-figurative, but I have a problem with
the term since it suggests derivation from representation – as with Mondrian’s
paintings inspired by an apple tree or De Kooning’s colourful messes evolved
from the nude. Such derivation is absent from
Bonvin’s material events and their concerns. We
appear to be dealing with works taken up with primary visual issues: verticals
favoured over horizontals, and a suspicion of secondary colours (that might suggest some reference to appearances). Her paintings are concrete – visual facts, sufficient
in themselves. The energy of the gesture has
no place here, as it has in the expressive abstracts of De Kooning – which
again imply some narrative in reaction to the subject.
The language of colour and form which she employs owes more to late
Mondrian than to that artist’s early journey away from figuration, and indeed
it is clear that she accepts that this language has extended, via American
hard edge painting, into the minimalism that informs the output of Alan Charlton
or Yuko Shiraishi.
This sort of work is profoundly unpersuasive –
for it sees persuasion as retrograde, the viewer seduced by illusion into
sympathy with subjects, ideals, morals and belief-systems.
It is largely in reaction to this notion of art as propaganda that
the early modernists of the 20th century aimed for an art about
which, in Ortega y Gasset’s terms, “one could neither laugh nor cry” (On the Dehumanisation of Art, 1925). What
matters is the structure of the painting, the deliberately “cool” fact of
its absolute balance, the issues of shape and form resolved as clearly as
musical issues might be resolved in a piece by Webern.
Yet all too often, this equilibrium can only be
achieved if a rigid fidelity to elemental units - right angles and primary
colours - holds sway. This is what Bonvin feels
the need to question. In 1986 she created a blue
square of vertical stripes that became increasingly lighter. The blue was experienced as a gradient. She has experimented with working in subdued secondary
colours – greys and browns, and recently she created a configuration of three
ridged squares in which the ridges get softer and softer in each square. One may experience the gradients here as sections
of the outer hubs of wheels looked at straight-on. In
other recent work she punctures the birch ply ground with rows of increasingly
small dots which seem to fade almost to nothingness.
It is as if a mist hung over part of the picture.
Such innovations admit irony into the reading of these otherwise pristine
resolutions of visual issues. The gradients suggest
that the work may be curving away from us. As
soon as we can use the term “suggest” we are beginning to speak a language
at variance with the modernist language of “dehumanized” form.
The curve is a notoriously difficult element to
include in any work which concerns structural resolution.
Its line is difficult to pin down. Sinuosity
suggests sensuousness. A circle cannot be calculated
in its own curved terms, we have to break it down into a series of short
straight lines. A curve can never be an absolute
in the way that a straight line can be. This
is perhaps why the curve now joins the gradient as a concern in Bonvin’s
work. She does more than pin it down, she identifies
it by puncturing it. The curve therefore becomes
delineated by a series of holes. This in itself
constitutes a gesture reminiscent of Lucio Fontana’s slash-marks that lacerate
his canvases. This emphatic act of puncturing
the ground returns us to expression, however precisely it is done (even though
it takes no more than the squeeze of a trigger, a bullet gets fired).
Bonvin’s current work is the culmination of a theme
that began in 2004 inspired by graphs showing the sine curve. Attracted by the sense of indisputable logic
and order which mathematical diagrams seem to carry, she aims to achieve
a similar visual balance where forces are stilled and resolved. However, certain innovations upset the standard clichés
of stability: several of the works are horizontal rather than vertical and
the colours are not simply primary but, in the artist’s words, “convey distinctive
characters…so contributing to the accuracy and finality of the statement.” In addition,
the sine curve, which traces the trajectory of a moving circle, has a multitude
of applications – from anatomy to aeronautics - so it comes to the work replete
with referential significance. When placed on
a grid, the curve can be broken up into series of overlapping rectangles,
linked by chains of ‘points’ that record the measurements.
Sometimes these rectangles serve to contain the punctures; sometimes,
though, the curve is allowed to float free, and one senses an emotional resolution
is here being allowed to take over from any purely formal solution of a problem.
Anthony
Howell, September, 2005
Susan
Bonvin was born in 1948 in
Group
exhibitions include Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Brigstock (2002) Point
Line Plane, Francis Graham-Dixon Gallery, London (1998) Swiss
Artists in the UK, Swiss Embassy, London (2000) touring from the October
Gallery and Economist Gallery, London (1998). Her work is held in Collections
in England and abroad, including Galerie Hoffmann, Germany, Arts Council
England and New Hall Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge.
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