It's About
Bonifacho’s canvases are graphic renderings of symbols which are often painted in highly contrasting colours, using layers of rich, textured oil paint with a luminous surface. Bonifacho's canvases have finished, painted sides and are on stretched canvas.
TESTAMENT PAPERS SERIES
2010-2014
The Testament Papers series addresses themes that have been found in Bonifacho's paintings for many years: the use of language as subject matter, fragments of news from around the world, and evocative names of global places and events. These are combined with a painter’s fascination with the nature of paint itself and the structural possibilities of geometry and grids.
The paintings in Testament Papers are like a conversation with the viewer — a partial conversation, where incomplete phrases, cropped letters and semi-submerged words come forth like conversations in a foreign language or the voice of a radio commentator obscured by static. They are very much about the transmission of information and emphasize communication as part of a larger system of information storage and retrieval.
The works conjure up impressions of maritime signal flags, street banners or wood block prints. The muted, industrial steel blues and greys combined with ochre and dark reds give them a solemn, historical quality, like images from the Eastern European Bloc. – Mia Johnson
