Kaleidoscopic No. 23: Elvire Bonduelle
A quest for joy in the work...
Leonardo Bravo:
Hello Elvire I'm in Los Angeles, and you are in Paris right now. It's really wonderful to connect as I came upon your work through some mutual connections and the work that you had done in a residency at Bangkok 1899. I was really touched by the humanity of the work. There's such a sense of storytelling and narrative, and I also felt there was a timelessness to it. So I thought we could start off by just hearing a little bit about your practice, how you define it, and then talking about some specific projects. Again thank you for being in conversation. Kaleidoscopic Projects is a great way to connect with and amplify a community of makers through some expansive conversations.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well, I thank you Leonardo for presenting my work with such great words, because I think it's quite sharp. It's … Well, it's nice to hear this. I would say that the very beginning of my work is quite personal and in a way, intimate, even if it may not look like this. I'm taking a rope which is the same rope from the beginning. I don't know if you say this in English. I'm not, I'm sure we don't say this, but pull..
Leonardo Bravo: Pull on the string. <laugh>, pull the string!
Elvire Bonduelle: Pull the string. Okay. It's a little thinner. I pull the same string from the beginning. And it's funny how this string is still here. So the starting point is that I was brought up in a family where contemporary art was not very highly considered. When I heard about art in my young age, it was more about classical art, big paintings from the past, or architecture, we say “les vieilles pierres”, the old stones ? but it was never actually alive. These oldies were highly respected, but so far from reality and so impressive too.
It was a bit the same at school : we were taught art history in a rather authoritarian way. The teachers were always saying : “the artist meant this”, and “here you can see a line going from X to Y that means this and that”. They deconstructed everything and it was always so very meaningful and boring at the same time. It didn't allow us to feel anything. It created such a big distance.
Still, I loved making things and I ended up going at les Beaux Arts in Paris.
I was lucky enough to be accepted there and it was easy to go and see what was going on on the art scene, I would ride my bike to visit all the galleries and I discovered a very dark and depressing landscape. It frightened me. I didn't want to become such a depressed person. I thought art shouldn't bring such sad feelings to other people and I decided I would try to bring some kind of optimism to people.
That was my starting point. To avoid the cursed artist's myth at any cost.
So one thing was to bring a sense of happiness, to share something joyful, and to fulfill this objective, I found another crucial point that is still one of the main ones in my work : it is to give or add a functionality to my works, because I thought, okay, being an artist is not a real job, it's gonna be really difficult to make a living out of it, and if I make things that can also be useful I may be a little less lonely. I may be a little bit useful myself.
The truth is I would have loved to become an architect to design our everyday life surroundings. But I wasn’t good in mathematics to make it. So well, I thought, okay, I'll make art, but functional. Usual art. It was a sort of auto-insurance.
Now, the truth is that functionality isn't always so important. Mostly it tells stories. Like the sofa I am drawing these days. I do everything to make it functional, even more than a standard sofa as a matter of fact, but will it be comfortable … I hope so!
Leonardo Bravo:
It’s so interesting that you grew up steeped in classical art while your work feels so alive and present. Your work feels so much about telling stories. It’s compelling how you can imbue objects with stories and this sense of being grounded in life itself. Like you're saying, you went towards joy, you wanted to express joy in your work. You wanted to express this feeling of being alive.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Yes, and, well it's not exactly joy in the the end, it's more like a quest for joy : I wanted my art to be joyful, but it was not always so easy, because I'm not always joyful, even if I'm quite lucky in the sense that I found some ways to make myself quite happy. But it's also talking about the fact that I am looking for it, for this happiness. It is the learning of life I am making and sharing simultaneously.
I also discovered that my way of seeing things was very down to earth and it didn't really fit with art and all that more airy, subtle stuff. Progressively I understood that it had to detach from myself, and my wills, and it could become, uh, ironical or cynical, something I didn't expect. I liked irony. I didn't like cynicism. I had to always surf on this comic side and become more aware of the comic stupidity of my quest, because it's true. It's a quest.
And so in a way, I deconstructed my education through my art, and that's how I got interested also in standards and norms, and how we fit into the mold or not. That's also how I ended up going to Los Angeles with my “House Car Dog” project, a sort of triptych about happiness and this American dream we all had in mind as kids. And so I went to Los Angeles even if LA is not the place where suburbs were born. The first place for suburban living in the US is like Levittown and all that I could have gone there, but I didn't know at that time. And in Los Angeles there is something that interested me in terms of domestic architecture as it is so very free, and lively and fun. This house-car-dog pattern is often overplayed. The same ideal seems to drive everyone in a very … organized way.
I was there in 2014 and 15, I had done a video with a little song “Maison Voiture Chien” just before, and made an eponymous book with Bandini some time after, and a memory game too. When I was there I drew and painted.
Leonardo Bravo:
Having experienced living in Berlin with that feeling of history they have there. It's so deep and dense. And then you come to LA and everything's like you said, these single family homes. It's so horizontal. There's that sense that the weather feels like the most important thing, rather than like the weight of history, you know? Right. Everything's very impermanent out here.
Elvire Bonduelle:
It's really so impressive when you arrive there, you discover it is actually another world. And that's how I began to paint, because actually, at last I didn't have all that historical weight upon my shoulders. That big History thing. I realized how heavy it was by just moving on the other side of the Atlantic. I could finally paint. I didn't know anything about painting and I just bought some canvases, brushes and colors and realized it could be easy.
Painting was very different than what I expected, maybe because I'm a sort of project artist and I like to have a direction, I like to know where I go, even if I never really get there.
But as I said, I still have the same string in my hands,and to me it should be still intuitive from the beginning to the end. Art should never become, too serious. I mean, yes, the quest can be serious, but the final result, what I propose to people, to the viewer should not.
Leonardo Bravo:
I want to get into the work itself since the project that resonated with me was the Bangkok 1899 residency, especially your work in typography, the way you use typography in what I would assume are the more recent pieces,
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well, the works with typography actually started in Los Angeles with those pieces I called “facade accessories”. As many, I was amazed by the gigantic letters and advertisements you can see on buildings in Los Angeles. And I thought anyone could, everyone should advertise for their own ideals, their own virtues, anything they want to promote. So I imagined and designed sort of personal ads that people would like to address to other people by showing them off on their own houses. I draw quite a few “facade accessories” before I got a real commission for the first one I made that you may go and see on Tuxedo Terrace in the hills, not far from the Hollywood sign.
Leonardo Bravo:
Oh, you mean that symbol of Los Angeles and its promise of eternal fame? <Laughs>
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well, yes. That's where I did the first one, and it says “Faith Hope Peace” on three consecutive facades of a Spanish mission revival house. I proposed my commissioner a bunch of words before we found what fitted us both. It was a great experience.
Leonardo Bravo:
I'm, I'm looking at the pictures right now. They look great.
Elvire Bonduelle:
So these were the first words pieces, with big and thin metal letters extending their lines on the house.
Words in general are like fragments or pieces that struck me, I like to repeat them as mantras. Some come from readings, some come from songs. I like to be struck by one word or two words that suddenly seems to sum up a complex thing, or thought or feeling. When you're listening to the radio and just by chance two words rimes and resonates deeply, so I keep them in mind for the next project, often painting these days. And then, when I paint them, it becomes something different again. It brings meanings and enriches some vague ideas I have.
Well I don't really know how to explain why I do this, I just like to collect words and isolate or combine some together, also playing with the shape of letters. It may be sort of mini haikus.
Leonardo Bravo:
That's what I get from your word series. They feel like little snippets or fragments, like you're saying haikus in a way.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Yes, I guess it has something to do with visual poetry or so ...
The lettering is important, sometimes I would like to draw only letters to give up with meanings. But I also like to bear with this constraint. And it has become a drug to look for words that resonates in me, even though I cannot really explain why or what for.
The typographic style if I can say so came from my “drawing with a ruler” practice. After several years of being considered as a bad drawer at school, I decided I would stop trying to go the academic way, but rather find my own approach, where it felt right and fun. So the opposite of their free-hand rule was to draw with rulers and shapes that would constrain the pencil and evacuate an excess of sensitiveness.
Leonardo Bravo:
Elvire, even though you mention that you weren't that good at drawing, you have such an incredible sense of composition, of spacing, of playing with negative and positive spacing and weight and balances. I mean, that's a really keen sense of using drawing in all those various factors.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well thank you! I have a lot of fun with balancing the shapes and drawing in the more elementary possible way, I try each time to take a minimum of decision. I like this idea of a minimalist method. I'm not really a minimalist because I'm frivolous and some how generous too. I talk to myself a lot, I like narratives, but the minimalist gesture, this idea of making as little effort as possible, it is not because I'm lazy, but I like when things are very simple, when you can see how it was done. And when you give the feeling that it was quickly and easily done. When it gives a sense of freshness. I love painted ads in countries where printing isn't very developed. Often the painter goes straight to the point to illustrate something. It is rudimentary and so strong in the same time.
Leonardo Bravo:
I'm looking at the images of the installation in Bangkok 1889 there's this reductive element, a very clean and minimalist graphic quality, but also having a richness of color. So tell us about these paintings in the installation.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Art is about relations. Relations between objects and people, relations between people with objects. Lawrence Wiener used to say this in great words.
For this word painting series using the Thaï alphabet, I painted mangoes underneath. The words come after, on top, as a grid. A metal grid in my mind. Like facade accessories.
I chose to represent mangoes, not because it is the fruit tourists are so keen on eating in Thailand, but because I discovered there is mango and mango. Same same but different. Those you buy are nothing compared to those growing on wild mango trees. There were some in the garden next door to our house and, during the mango season, a very nice old lady would come every few days to bring us a big bag of mangoes, just for us, just because she knew we loved it, and we would spend sometime together. I couldn't actually exchange with words as I didn't speak Thaï and she didn't speak English, but we always had some kind of funny conversations making faces and trying signs. We would contemplate the khlong, you know, these dirty canals spread all over the city, and watch birds and flowers. It was a beautiful shared moment. I usually cherish old ladies, but her, Khun Yaye, she is in my pantheon. I painted the mangoes thinking of her. And you know what ? It was thanks to our common friend Susanna that I lived in this magical place with this great lady. I guess this fruit represents something very sentimental and tender related to my experience of Bangkok, my taste for old ladies, and friendship in general.
Leonardo Bravo:
That's what I find compelling about this as you were talking about the works being very minimalist, very reductive. I can see that in the composition. But then just with your use of color and the way you use the shapes of the mangoes, these paintings to me are about this richness of a human experience in Thailand. You have such a really beautiful way of balancing these qualities. You find a way to express something very reductively visually but with such richness of the human experience. So that's like, that's a magic trick right there!
Elvire Bonduelle:
Oh thank you ! I am glad you can feel this, it sounds great. You know I firstly thought I painted mangoes as their color is so rich and powerful, I find this yellow so very joyful and sunny. I hope it brings optimism. This warm yellowish orange seems to say the mangoes' sweetness, with just a little bit of green to enhance the whole.
Leonardo Bravo:
What was it like being in a tropical place like Bangkok and surrounded by Southeast Asian histories and cultures?
Elvire Bonduelle:
I loved it. Bangkok was not precisely a choice. We ended up there by chance as we wanted to go live abroad again with my husband, because we lived in LA for a while and loved it. So, as many, we thought of Mexico but well, by chance my husband had this opportunity to go to Bangkok so we landed there in 2019. Tropical weather is emollient. The even heat brings a feeling of slowness and freedom.
I knew nothing about Thailand, I only had that feeling from the South of China were I had travelled a bit before that people may be a little like Latin people. They like to laugh a lot, so they can be rough and sarcastic but are usually quite straight-forward. I am very attracted to this kind of relations with people.
And I love big wild cities, a little bit like Los Angeles, in fact. Messy cities. I really love that. I think it allows a sort of freedom too. There is spare space to create things, people organize things by themselves, that you can see in the streets, just by chance.
And that's where I began to spot all those blue PVC pipes you can see everywhere in Thailand. I already loved pipes in general before, and there ! They looked great. I had to do something with it. I did “helped ready mades” as Duchamp would have called it. They became vases, lamps, pots … I showed some at Marta Gallery in L.A. in 2020. I don't know why I like pipes so much... I remember reading once something about the “bended pipes poetic” / “La poétique du tube cintré” in French, I am sad I lost track on this text? I think it explained something about it.
Leonardo Bravo:
I also also I love this piece, the fabric piece that hangs from the ceiling from the Greek Paintings series.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Oh yes, the big black thing, the Greek tarpaulin. That's the same thing as for the pipes. An helped ready made. I found the material for sale on the side walk, a black tarpaulin with green lines sold by the meter. That was handy, I didn't have to draw the grid anymore. It was there already. I could simply add my letters. I draw LESS IS MORE OR LESS IS HOPE OR LESS … and so on vertically as a litany, and hung it in the big space to divide it a bit.
Leonardo Bravo:
I like the combination of these paintings with this sort of installation of a table and chairs.
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well the black tarpaulin, reminded me the building's architecture and its windows forming black grids. So it resonated as something potentially functional to me, a curtain, a partition. And the table and chairs with the memory game, it is a small domestic user-friendly space, something I really like to do when I imagine a show, mostly when it's a painting show. It is always better if one can sit and spend time. Also because I still have this little fear of showing only paintings. I think it's a bit strange as I am not a real painter. It is a way to mix my “tableaux” I mean l'objet “peinture” with other objects, here a table and chairs. And well, this game I made is a memory card game with pictures of houses, cars and dogs. It's fun. You must flip the cards and memorize them to find pairs. Sometimes on the photos which I mostly took by myself, you can see a house and a car and a dog, or 3 dogs : so it gives you 3 points. I'm usually not a player at all but I like this game.
Leonardo Bravo:
My son would love this game. He is very good at visual recognition and matching images.
Elvire Bonduelle:
It's perfect for a five year old. By the way, I have two sons, six and two years old.
Leonardo Bravo:
Well, we gotta all meet <laugh>, right?
Elvire Bonduelle:
Sure. I hope we can meet sometime soon.
Leonardo Bravo:
The thing about the game connects back to what you've been saying all along this, the string of this human touch, this human connection that is expressed in your work. I wanted to ask about some of your influences and inspirations. The more we chat, and of course this is through my own lens, the works makes me think of the design collective Memphis. The functionality, the joy, the whimsy, and also an artist who to me has been such a big influence is Natalie du Pasquier, somebody who came from the Memphis group. Her sense of design and the way she uses those formal elements in unexpected ways.
Elvire Bonduelle:
The Memphis Group was one of my first loves, I especially loved Ettore Sottsass and it was funny because my first gallerist who was presented to me by my teacher Richard Deacon was representing Ettore's work and I felt so secure in his company for my first show in a gallery. His elementary symmetrical pieces of furnitures with playful colors and shapes, a bit too big and heavy as if we were kids again in front of too big objects ... I love du Pasquier's work for sure, her drawings, and also Peter Shire whom I was lucky enough to meet in Los Angeles, and with the whom I have the honor to show works these days at La Cité Radieuse!
But I am not very good at talking of my artists's pantheon... I always think of old loves like Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman and François Morellet as if I had to remain faithfull.
Recently I took out an Agnes Martin catalogue from my shelves. And maybe my work has nothing to do with hers, but this grid thing and this great tenderness, this something very innocent that she is looking for, there are things there that I appreciate deeply.
Leonardo Bravo:
I absolutely love her work and love the way it connect with yours.
Elvire Bonduelle:
I'm always attracted to the desert and going away from all the noise and find myself alone. This idea of being away from family, away from friends, away from everything, to have more time and room for just your work, your search, it is such a big impossible dream.
Leonardo Bravo:
So finally something that I've asked folks is, these last few years, the pandemic, Covid, all these social upheavals, have been incredibly challenging, but have also allowed people to rethink their lives in a way. So what's that process been like for you? And what are you looking towards, uh, in the future?
Elvire Bonduelle:
Well, I'm very interested in what's going on in the world, and I try to stay hooked to it, and not give up. I really fear of becoming an asocial, acculturated person locked in her studio, understanding nothing of the world. But the more I look for answers, well, I feel like there are no answers. And maybe it's only the position you choose to have in the world that can be helpful to yourself, and maybe to others. But, I've begun to understand that this feeling of being lost, in front of the world's hugeness, is a good feeling that I can just let it accompany me. Well it's not being lost because I, I don't feel....well, yes, I feel lost <laugh>. But there's a contradiction between wanting to know and understand, and wanting to be part of, and also this feeling that it's all too noisy. If you see what I mean
Leonardo Bravo:
I get it. I get exactly what you're saying. I feel like I've come to a point of acceptance that the world is just complex. Like there's complexity everywhere. And change is the only given. I mean, it's just constant change. And to even try to think like, oh, my life was gonna have a shape that was gonna go in some direction or some place — it’s too much to even predict or to think that way. It’s almost like giving in to the complexity as it's always there, and that's just it, you know?
Elvire Bonduelle:
Yes. Let's make it beautiful.
Leonardo Bravo:
What I’ve realized about your work and as we're talking more I'm getting to understand the sense of invitation to the viewer, the invitation to partake in something that you provide. And that's really interesting because it's not art that creates a distance. It's art that is joyful, that creates a sense of invitation to participate.
Elvire Bonduelle:
It's true. I'm writing that down <laugh>.
Leonardo Bravo:
Elvire this has been really delightful and hope that we can continue the conversation and work on a project at some point.
Elvire Bonduelle:
I thank you very much. And I hope we can imagine something.
For more information:
http://www.elvirebonduelle.com/en
IG: @elvirebonduelle