PETER BONDE: MIRROR PAINTINGS
Nino Mier Gallery presents Mirror Paintings (Brussels Version), Peter Bonde’s third exhibition with the gallery and his inaugural solo show in Brussels. The presentation will feature bold, expressive new paintings on reflective mirror foil.
March 1 – April 6, 2024
Once associated with De Unge Vilde (The Young Wild Ones) – an art movement of the 1980s reinstating painting with a gestural, ironic approach – Bonde carries the movement’s punkish spirit into his new paintings. Though some works are more minimal, furious brushstrokes and bold splashes of color still appear throughout their surfaces. In recent years, Bonde has also shifted away from canvas and towards mirror foil. This experiment gives a simple, yet striking effect, making the strokes of paint seem almost like a weightless, energetic release of color.
The gestural brushstrokes, thick and forceful, cover almost the entire surface, reflecting a dialogue between spontaneity and consciousness, emotion and intellect. Some works in Mirror Paintings (Brussels version) hold opaque layers of oil paint, while more delicate washes of color dance across other works’ surfaces.
Yet others incorporate collaged materials sourced from book covers, found texts and images as well as private photos. These elements converge into a singular installation, wherein the works partly covered, form a fragmented mirroring wall effect, a kind of mosaic that encompasses the surroundings, throwing viewers back on their own image.
Bonde’s paintings offer a visual narrative, reflecting the ever-changing movement, light, and textures of the rooms they inhabit. Viewers are no longer mere witnesses to the works; they escape the contemplative role and inevitably interact with the paintings. Furthermore, Bonde’s incorporation of found objects or texts into the works provide a larger exploration of seriality, authorship and mechanical reproduction – a series of concerns present not only within this series, but across his entire body of work.
Balancing between the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism and conceptual concerns shared by artists of the Pictures Generation, Bonde questions the power and function of mass-circulated imagery. He uses such images not only for inspiration, but as appropriated objects. In works like Little Finland and Shut up, no you shut up, images, photos, and words converge, creating a multi-layered and multi-media composition of inkjet prints, oil painting and mirror foils.
This deconstructed process and reversed temporality heighten the optical potential of the reflective surface, turning the mirror foil into a medium through which messages are transmitted. The viewer becomes the subject of the artwork, seeing themselves within it. The result is a constant metamorphosis of the paintings, integrating both the space and the viewer into the ever-evolving artwork—an immersive experience that also raises questions about the ontological status of art and appropriation.