Christian Bonnefoi

Overview

Christian Bonnefoi offers an unusual example of an art theorist who has successfully turned his hand to practice, as evidenced by his 2008 retrospective exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The Oniris gallery has invited him for the thirteenth time since 1992 for a new solo exhibition of recent paintings during the summer of 2023.

Christian Bonnefoi's work was built very early on on the idea that the picture, the painting, was not limited to a surface delimited by edges, which had to be filled by a composition responding to more or less conscious intentions or gestures, but a place that the painter can construct through his practice, by playing on all the elements that can constitute the painting and its appearance, its unveiling.

Even if Christian Bonnefoi's work may remind us of Matisse or Picasso for their freedom of expression, or of De Kooning or Newman for their practice of writing and construction, it has always been situated outside of fashion; it is a living work.

This exhibition is centered around the PL series, in which Christian Bonnefoi works with large, colorful brushstrokes in the space of the canvas, made on both sides of the painting with transparency. The exhibition "PL - 2023-1998" presents new colorful paintings from the PL IV series from 2023 alongside more historical works from the first PL series in 1998.