Peter Bonde | Six sculptures and forty-seven drawings

The series Hands Off are studies of hands in different situations and narratives that bear witness to a deep presence in the study of the object and a sensitivity to the material, which here is pencil on paper. Similarly, all the drawings on the exhibition show in the best Bonde manner a multitude of motivic fragments and ironic ambiguities through numerous references and comments, sometimes to his own art and life, and also to various artist friends in a series of portraits of Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, etc.

Peter Bonde’s sculptural works at the exhibition can be seen as a document on his on going work with the possibilities of painting here and now as an extended genre.

In the sculptures we will among others find Bonde’s spontaneous, abstract painting strokes on mirror foil, which he has worked with in recent years. Now, however, the paintings are taken down from the walls and placed on a steel structure. Suddenly they are perceived as three-dimensional objects that generate a constant exchange between Bonde’s painted surfaces and the ultra-reflecting mirror foil, which incorporate both space and viewer.

The drawings and sculptures bring together very different elements in an entangled network of origins, materials and aesthetic spaces. This complex and fragmentary nature of the exhibition is as comprehended in a large installation where Bonde on a table has placed various paintings, a flat screen, works on paper and objects. This installational accumulation seems to create a metaphor for an exhibition where memories are allowed to rest, co-exist and yes, accumulate – resulting in new combinations, expressions and forms.

Peter Bonde (b. 1958) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Art (1976-82). He was a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts’s painting school from 1996 to 2005 and represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 1999 (with Jason Rhoades). Since the 1980s, Bonde has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Denmark and abroad and he is represented in all major Danish art museums including The Danish National Gallery, ARoS, the art museum Trapholt and Esbjerg Art Museum. He is also represented at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany and in the private collections Elgiz Collection,Turkey and Axa Northern Stern in Cologne.