Kirchenvolk
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.
HABITAT PIXEL SERIES
1996-2024
Bonifacho's long-standing concerns about the darker aspects of computer technologies have found a powerful voice in the Habitat Pixel series. Through the use of semiotic metaphors, this series explores tensions between the logical, linear scripting of virus programs and their capacity for massive destruction. These elegant, distinctive and idiosyncratic paintings confront the chaos – both seen and unseen by the human eye – that can be unleashed in viral habitats.
Bonifacho imitates the effects of computer viruses and worms by scrambling letters and messages in large-scale oil paintings. They range from clean, minimal compositions with banner-like emblems to deeply layered carriers of diffused messages. They imply the most horrific threats to security imaginable – the launch of missiles worldwide, or the collapse of entire economic systems.
Through rhythmic, complex rows of wingdings and lettering with scumbled overpainting, Bonifacho explores a lexicon of motifs. Clean grid lines check any tendency to skew while allowing an exquisite twisting and turning of the symbols within their cavities. Bonifacho’s signage and brushwork contribute to singular, interwoven pictorial entities that belie the real-world potential for viral treachery, despite every security measure that might be taken. – Mia Johnson 2003
