Rosario Bond

Filled with vague, impatient, alluring forms, sometimes recog- nizable and perfectly dominated, her works constitute a materialization of the affective, the perceptive and the reflective, The artist’s vision reaches, on this occasion, the synthesis of her own creative experience, in visual encounters devoid of rhetoric. On retracing this painter’s steps one must inevitably make ref- erence to the artistic connection between Bond and Neo- Expressionism. In her canvases the viewer can feel the ances- try of Lüpertz, of Polke in the application of color through intense chromatic contrasts rather than in the subtle distortions of her drawing.

Bond resorts to a gestural, thick brushstroke; her palette seeks a combination of acid colors, as well as the contrasts between warm and cold tones, and on other occasions it exploits the gradations of a single hue. The simplicity of the backgrounds is deliberate; she only dwells upon a few elements that mark the contours in order to intensify the contrast between ground and figure. In her work, blots and color appear as quasi-expressionistic discursive qualities linking the work to the unconscious. Bond works in the manner of the guide of a fantastic expedition, presenting her large canvases before us as itineraries along a subtle and intimate zone that incites contemplation. Her compositions are characterized by the strong monochrome tonalities of the background, which contribute to the work a sensible nuance that defines the artist’s imprint, where the discreet vocabulary may be seen making way for purely lyrical motifs featuring prismatic colors subjectively applied through dynamic brushstrokes.

A painting by Bond is, in the first place, a workspace where, as in the case of the series “All my friends”, through an insistent repetition of layer-upon layer of paint , she allows the film of an open construction to emerge. The colors interlace without any of them being sacrificed. Complex and multiple iconographic sources participate in the work. The artist takes possession of childhood memories, of everyday life, where reality and the fiction of that invented mythology frequent one another freely. Lines and color dance on the surface, presenting an animated collection of shapes defined by reds, ochers, greens and violets. Applying layers of pigments that filter out and flow on the surface, Bond creates a tactile and extraordinarily evocative expression. Her works permit infinite readings; they are spaces in which the spectator participates sensorially and emotionally. This seminal calligraphy evokes a feeling of great lightness, in which the oneiric element of the motifs is drawn towards and imprisoned by the background. The tense interplay between these two elements, the static quality of the background as opposed to the energetic brushstrokes of impastoed color, lead to the vibrating emergence of movement created by the work of the brush, revealing the gesture, the vigorous trace of her intervention.

Dynamic and powerful, halfway between figuration and abstrac- tion, her work appears to become suddenly unified in canvases in which one may distinguish, in the first place, an abundance of material from which the motif may gradually be elicited: a face − Brigitte −; flowers- Le jardin aux fleurs; a monkey. The monkey see-monkey do. Lumps, blots, spills...each provoked accident is instinctively repaired, metamorphosed into a cosmic ballet. Beyond the human figure, the still lifes and the landscapes that have served as a point of departure, there is the energy that exists at the origin of all forms of life, and each of her composi- tions explodes and radiates.

Using vibrant but elegant colors, combining them with great mastery, Bond succeeds in constructing refined tensions and harmonies. She produces an abstract painting endowed with enormous strength and energy, which does not force the view- er to “see”/”read” a story, but simply creates true complicities. It seems that abstract painting still has things to show. Docere, Movere, Delectare: that it teach, move, and please is, according to Horace, all we must demand from art.