Bonco - Citizen Account

In the Galleries Library Space – we are presenting a series of new paintings by Bonco

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based artist Bonco has long been interested in the metaphysical possibilities of grids and geometric abstraction, taking his cues from the early history of the avant-guard and its close relationship with esoteric spiritualities and the pursuit of transcendence. Bonco seeks out the possibilities in after image, optical interference, ambiguity, contrast and chromatic vibration to forge his eccentric virtual reality beyond figuration. “Art is not what you see”, said Degas, “but what you make others see.”

The new works in this exhibition are still in keeping with Bonco’s interest in geometric grids and the Zodiac. For millennia human beings have attempted to find terrestrial meaning in the patterns and movements of the stars. As the Hermeticists say, “as above, so below”. That pursuit of the secret knowledge and the romantic subline is very much in effect. We are invited to seek that knowledge in the abstraction of the paintings. This is very much a maximalist sort of minimalism, and unlike the pristine geometry of most minimalism, Bonco retains all of the small flaws, quirks, and all of the other unmistakable artifacts of the artist’s hand.

These paintings diverge from Bonco’s earlier Zodiac works in both being smaller, 350x300mm, fun size, and much less strict and linear. This new fluidity owes much to Bonco’s interest in dance and training as a dance therapist working with adults with intellectual and physical disabilities. This seems a natural fit for an artist already seeking to liberate people through visual expression. Bonco pares down the mechanism of the composition to the most irreducible, essential elements to encourage in the viewer a sense of the potential infinite.

This connection has allowed the artist to tap into a deeper and less constrained level of individual expression. Bonco is striving for an even closer engagement with the human existential condition. His theme of exploring the big questions of what life means and what our place in the world is, transitions from a meditative uncovering to an intuitive visual dance. The compositions rhythmically buzz, pulse and weave. As the Victorian aesthetic Walter Pater said, “all art aspires to the quality of music.”

Bonco’s higher plane is the Boncosmos, a quirky variant on Plato’s heaven of ideal forms, a better world, an abstract utopia. Bonco paints in oils on linen. The richness of the oils and the limited palette make the Op Art qualities of the work really pop as retinal candy. What, at first, seems like rigid grids, lines and geometric patterns, reveals on closer inspection something infinitely more expressive, plastic and painterly, flexible in the manner of Agnes Martin but in the bold, pure colour of a crocheted peggy square blanket or Native American textile.

Bonco’s paintings with their reduced range of colours and lack of narrative or autobiographical elements, are open to interpretation and imagination. They are not conceptual because they need the real world to push and pull against. That is part of the charm of these paintings. They are an invitation to the dance.

- Andrew Paul Wood