CURRENT & UPCOMING
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AD INTÉRIEURS
AD Intérieurs marks its tenth anniversary this year, with the exhibition being held from September 4th to September 22nd 2019.
Pierre Bonnefille has decided to dream up a ‘cabinet d’inspiration’ for his first submission to AD Intérieurs – a living room like no other, filled with poetry, just like his work, a showcase for the traces of his travels.
A celebration of the very act of getting away from it all, Pierre Bonnefille lifts the veil on the physical traces of his travels, individual sources of inspiration collected by the creative over the course of his wanderings.
As an inveterate explorer and ‘colour collector’, the artist is constantly picking out a material here, an object there, pigments everywhere, ranging from old fabrics to precious stones. Eclectic and often eccentric, upon close examination, they all demonstrate their inextricable bond with the material world.
These elements and traces drawn from nature and brought back from Asia, Iceland, Patagonia and Thailand are at the very heart of his work. ‘These collections actually give rise to artistic creations’. From them spring photographs, watercolours and drawings, which in turn give rise to items of furniture, paintings and wall designs...
The ‘cabinet d’inspiration’ has been laid out for AD Intérieurs in such a way as to illustrate this artistic process. We begin by entering a kind of ante-chamber adorned with a wealth of different drawings, the forerunners to any act of creation. The space has an intimate feel and we slowly discover the artist’s most recent works, which evoke his many discoveries.
During this journey of many ports of call, we will encounter Japan in the shape of the ‘Furoshiki’ series, inspired by the traditional Japanese art of fabric wrapping and Africa, with the ‘Metamorphosis’ collection of furniture inspired by the discovery of stones from old African copper mines. Gaze upon the Bronze Painting and its delicate designs that shift here and there according to the light to discover this Odyssey’s meditative side.
Pierre Bonnefille has truly worked wonders here, conceiving a number of completely unique creations for this exhibition. As always, particular attention has been paid to materials and colours.
This ‘Cabinet d’Inspiration’ is simultaneously a memory, a mental reconstruction and a ‘room for travelling’... ‘a treasure trove of inspiration’ gifted to us by the artist, gathered together in the space where art collection and the traces of his travels merge.
HÔTEL DE COULAGES, PARIS
FROM 4 TO 22 SEPTEMBER 2019
ART DUBAI
Pierre Bonnefille is pleased to announce the creation of three artworks for Piaget’s salon at Art Dubai, within a space imagined by designer Anne-Laure Weeden.
Open to special guests during the fair, which takes place 20-23 March, 2019, Piaget has initiated a dialogue between Pierre Bonnefille and Anne-Laure Weeden to produce a space that creates an immersive journey to the heart of gold, the heart of art: L’Or de l’Art. The circular space, is an ode to the iconic and delicately precise mechanisms of Piaget’s timepieces, the forms creating a theatre for the maison’s fine jewelry and watches, playing with the reflections of light on the gold and precious stones.
Pierre Bonnefille was fortunate to have full access to Piaget’s workshops, where he closely observed the artisans at work, drawing inspiration from the delicate engraving applied to Piaget’s pieces and the manner in which they reflect the material’s qualities. Whilst there he absorbed knowledge about the many techniques and traditions involved in the master craftsmanship of the watch and jewelry pieces, passed down the generations for 144 years.
The three artworks; “Bas Relief Gravé”, “The Sun” and “Mirage d’Or” embody the vibration of solar beams. Pierre Bonnefille is known for his creation of sensorial atmospheres, which we experience first-hand in the sculpture, “The Sun”. We can feel the sun’s energy resonate through its luminous beams around the lounge, thanks to the manipulation of precious metals and natural pigments, creating the illusion of smooth and creamy textures which reflect light and accentuate contours.
When entering the lounge visitors encounter “Mirage d’Or”, which provides a showcase niche for Piaget’s fine jewelry pieces. The polychromatic surface of the background shows the artist’s sources of inspiration, found in his attention to nature’s beauty, such as the perpetual movement of the sun’s reflection of light on water and the earth. At the top left-hand corner of the lounge “Bas Relief Gravé” illuminates our collection of time pieces, guiding the eye along its undulations, as if on a journey through the sand dunes.
Pierre Bonnefille is a French artist based in Paris, whose career began over 30 years ago. Constantly traveling the globe for inspiration, the artist’s public and private projects can also be found in the four corners of the world in the offices and boutiques of luxury boutiques, the headquarters of international lawyers and banks, as well as in private residences. He is an artist of materials, with the French status of “Maître d’art”, only using natural sources. His most recent paintings use a unique application of powdered bronze, carbon and mother-of-pearl.
PIAGET LOUNGE
FROM 20 TO 23 MARCH 2019
THE SALON
In partnership with Charles Burnand gallery, Pierre Bonnefille will be presenting several works during the famous art and design fair in New York.
Notably, the artist will be showing for the very first time two spectacular murals, each 285 x 285cm.
Pierre Bonnefille considers his mural compositions as a form of reflection, recomposed from a mosaic of memories and feelings.
The artist draws on this deconstructed material to imagine a range of colours, which he reconstructs through the form of a landscape, playing on reflections and resonances. He reveals through his geometric montages a universe of depths where light dances on the surface. The geometric motifs reflect, like a narrative fresco, a succession of emotions.
Within an original scenography staged in the “Collector’s lounge”, Pierre Bonnefille will also be presenting four of his “Bronze paintings”.
Under the eye and the hand of the artist, the bronze material stretches, melts and freezes in evanescent patterns on large abstract canvases, revealing landscapes, aquatic reflections and silky traces that resonate with the light.
NEW YORK
FROM 8 TO 12 NOVEMBER 2018
REFLECTIONS
PAINTINGS & MEDITATION ROOM
LIAIGRE MIAMI / MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT
SPECIAL PREVIEW THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2017
STILL ON VIEW IN PARIS UNTIL DECEMBER 22, 2017
GALERIE BOULLE — 4 RUE BOULLE 75011 PARIS
Quiet is rare in big cities. There’s little silence among the chaos. Those who seek a peaceful place can only find it in the Meditation Room. Never before exhibited in Paris, this installation conceived like a full scale working drawing and lit up with candles, brings us back to ancient times and exudes a vital force which secret nature only knows. The device is however simple: four bronze paintings pass before our eyes like abstract landscapes hung on the wall and ceiling like a heavenly vault of a somehow sacred presence.
In this warm and gentle half-light, the viewer feels their way along and ends up seeing shapes and shadows dancing, vibrating and catching the light. How not to think about rock paintings when immerged in this sensual cave? How not to assume that the artist tries to convoke the unconscious of an original pictorial tradition?
Yet the technique is extremely contemporary since Pierre Bonnefille chose to use metal mesh canvases on which bronze powder, silver and gold foils are laid, scrubbed, brushed and worked on in thick or infra-thin layers area by area.
Unlike most painters, his openwork canvases allow material to go back and forth, to disappear and reappear, as if they had pores and could breath like skin.
When several kilograms of these mineral powders and mediums are poured onto the canvas, it is as if the entire weight of the world was strained through the painter’s emotions. This process entirely alleviates the load of the textured layers and creates an impression of lightness, up to weightlessness.
Once again, the explanation of this mystery is to be found in nature. The sand pushed and thrown to the shore by the sea shapes reliefs, which, no matter their weight, seem volatile and about to fly away.
Pierre Bonnefille’s universe is floating because he made a pact with the void. Some fall when leaning onto the void, and others jump with an astounding agility. Such are his skin-like canvases, which mesh opens up into a field of imagination. A surface and a land of projections. Some will see the reflection of the moon on water at twilight. Others, the first glimmers of dawn. But they will all see light.
Pierre Bonnefille paints with light like photographers write with it. Even better, he gives a sensual form to the way light caresses the world, feels and colors it. His gold, bronze, silver or dark black paintings are like memorial traces of nature in different states.
The painter’s attention revolves around the reflections of a world deprived of its artificial luminous sources. The city lights are way too brutal and blinding. In this exhibition, the moon and the sun are used to highlight reliefs.
In Mirbeau, waters are quiet, but with Bonnefille, they talk. And nuances of black, muted et opaque for some painters, live here and avoid the evocation of absence. Like Marina Abramovic’s mineral stones to which one has to place on their forehead and torso to feel the effects, Pierre Bonnefille’s creations function like the sensual embrace and silent dialogue of beings with infinity.
Léa Chauvel-Lévy
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BRONZE PAINTINGS
EXHIBITION WITH LIAIGRE MUNICH
22 JUNE - 30 OCTOBER 2017
Pierre Bonnefille is proud to present his exhibition ‘Bronze Paintings’ at Liaigre Munich, opening 22 June, 2017. The exhibition will be dedicated to Pierre Bonnefille’s signature ‘Bronze Paintings’ and ‘Furoshiki Drawings’.
Pierre Bonnefille crossed paths with Christian Liaigre twenty years ago. The same quest for beauty, discipline and a shared exigency, doubtlessly contributed to setting up in time a continuous working relationship. Since their very first dialogue, numerous projects have come into existence.
For Liaigre, Pierre Bonnefille imagined colors, textures and materials associated with elements of furniture. He also made decorative panels and worked in situ on interior design projects all over the world. These projects reflected a meaningful relationship and a perfect interaction between the worlds of the two designers.
Pierre Bonnefille studied at the École Boulle and the National Superior School of Decorative Arts. In 2010 he was nominated Master of Arts. For thirty years, he has pursued an idea which passes simultaneously through his designing work in the field of interior design and architecture and a permanent painting activity. The latter even creates a privileged experimental ground that nourishes his work to a great extent.
At the origin of what Pierre Bonnefille calls his « bronze paintings», is the idea to explore a different technique that consists of placing a fine metallic framework on top of a tightly stretched canvass and then adding a substance (in this case bronze powder diluted in a binder or gold or silver foil).
This game of overlays allows him to achieve a foreground and a background in a purely material way, creating effects on depth and surfaces, textures and luminosity with subtle shades. The light that touches the material generates multiple highlights but also atmospheres that will vary throughout the course of the day and the intensity of the light.
Pierre Bonnefille likes to refer to landscape, observing the surface of the water to that of stones, leaves, soil and sand... In his workshop, he conserves these elements of nature like so many treasures: cases of insects with iridescent elytra, minerals and ores, treasures that breathe color and precious subtle materials.
Françoise-Claire Prodhon
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PAST
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MAIN EXHIBITIONS
2017 – Exhibitions with Liaigre Moscou & Liaigre Munich
2017 – Participation to Collective Design Fair New York with Leclaireur
2016 – Fair «PAD London» with Leclaireur Gallery
2016 – Exhibition «Pierre Bonnefille», Ormond Editions in Geneva
2016 – Exhibition «Metamorphosis», Paris Design Week, Galerie Boulle in Paris
2016 – Exhibition «Bronze», YenakArt Villa, art Gallery in Bangkok
2015 – Exhibition «Bronze», Galerie Boulle in Paris
Fair «Salon Révélations», at Grand-Palais in Paris
2014 – Exhibition «Quand la neige fond, où va le blanc», Galerie Boulle in Paris
Exhibition «Cortex», Galerie Boulle in Paris
2013 – Exhibition «Polychromies blanches», Galerie Boulle in Paris
Exhibition «Assemblages polychromes», Rebecca Willer Gallery in London
2012 – Exhibition «Blue Chromatics», Galerie Boulle in Paris
2011 – Exhibition «Paravent infini», Galerie Boulle in Paris
2010 – Exhibition «Urushi Volcanic», Galerie Boulle in Paris
Fair Furniture in Milano, «The Place»
2009 – Exhibition «Polychromies architecturales», Caisse des Dépôts in Paris
2008 – Exhibition «Écorces», Galerie Bréguet in Paris
2007 – Exhibition «Monochromes», Galerie Bréguet in Paris
2006 – Exhibition «Meubles manuscrits», Galerie Bréguet in Paris
2005 – Exhibition «In-Visible», Galerie Bréguet in Paris
2004 – Fair «100 % Design» in Tokyo, «Monochromes noirs»
2003 – Exhibition «Calligraphies», Marc Furrer Gallery in Geneva
2002 – Exhibition «Sculptures», Red Box Gallery in Zürich
2001 – Exhibition «Recto-Verso - Les couleurs végétales», ON-OFF Gallery in Geneva
1999 – Exhibition collective «Meubles et Sculptures autour des peintures de C Nicaise»,
Faider Gallery in Bruxelles
1998 – Exhibition «Meubles sculptures», Chelsea Harbour Design Center in London
Fair Decorex in Chicago, «Meubles sculptures»
1997 – Exhibition «Assemblage et collage sur toiles», Mac Cann Erickson Gallery in Levallois Perret
1994 – Exhibition «Peinture sur toile», Lavoir des Lices in Saint-Tropez
1992 – Exhibition «Peinture sur toile», Espace Archidée in Paris
1991 – Exhibition «Tracé sur toile», Galerie Florence Romanet in Paris
1990 – Fair Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris, «Bureau d’armateur - Mural monochrome Rouge», Lauréat Sad de bronze
1989 – Exhibition «Labyrinthe» Galerie Lesne in Paris
1985 – Fair «Salon des Artistes Décorateurs», «Fiction sur le musée Toulouse Lautrec» in Paris