Maxime Bondu - Bertrand Lamarche Bondu – Portfolio PORTFOLIO | Portfolio Exhibition view of Architeuthis, a prophecy, Kunstunion, Zurich, 2014 We often assume (by belief or superstition)

Maxime Bondu – Portfolio |

PORTFOLIO | Portfolio

Born in 1985. Lives and works in Geneva.

Maxime Bondu

Maxime Bondu, Les Possibles, 2012, © Emile Ouroumov



Biographie

Extract from Glances in the reflecting surface of the rear-view mirror, by Daniel Kurjaković.

[Maxime Bondu’s work] addresses themes and situations in a very direct manner with craft and sculptural work and using narrative means that often seem perplexing, strange, slightly absurd or enigmatic. They are not all grand pompous speeches about the world but more in the ‘case study’ category. A subject list of his works would include, for example, an abandoned cinema, chromatic experiments, the conquest of space and ideologies of progress (The Color of the Cosmos, 2015), the World Chess Championship 1972, research on telekinesis and the Cold War (The Remote Viewer, 2015), artificial intelligence (The Deep War, 2015), a bird ring, a falcon suspected of having been used by Mossad and a Turkish village (24311 Tel-Avivunia Israel, 2015), genealogical research on a particular type of pencil and forms of neoliberalism and ultra-capitalism (I, Pencil), typographical characters that have disappeared, the austerity policy and the decline and decay of the world economy (Before the Dawn, 2015), a stone carver and sculpted stars, supposed to refer to the deaths of CIA agents (The Stars on the Wall, 2014), octopuses and prophecies (Architeuthis, a Prophecy, 2014), an enormous map in book form that upsets the real proportions of an art institute (Macrotopographic Atlas, Palace of the Museums of Modern Art, West Wing, Level One, Recess of the Three Domes, 2013), electromagnetism and the nuclear apocalypse (History of a Pulse, 2013), electricity and entropy (The Bulb of Livermore, 2012–15) without forgetting androids, biotechnology and imaginary architecture (The Rosen Association, 2012–15), to give just a few examples.

Graduated of the Ecole Supérieure d'Art de Brest (FR) in 2009 and laureate of the 2016 Picker competition, Maxime Bondu has already had the opportunity to exhibit his work on several occasions in Europe : in Kine Kocmoc in Plovdiv (BG, 2016), The Halle du Nord (CH, 2015), the MAMAC in Nice (FR, 2014), the Kunstunion in Zurich (CH, 2014), Mains d'Oeuvres (Saint-Ouen, FR, 2014), the Maison Populaire in Montreuil (FR, 2014), at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR, 2013), the Centre d'Art de Neuchâtel (CH, 2013), the Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel, FR, 2013) and the Magasin in Grenoble (FR, 2010)



Exhibiton view of La Couleur du Cosmos, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2016 © Emile Ouroumov

Replica of the front neon sign based on the remained fixation points, lambda prints of the frame-by-frame color analysis of the movies screened at the cosmos cinema, from its beginning to its end, glass filtered with the color #282320 (result of the computer analysis), movies’ programme stained with purple ink, both found in the cinema basement, Lambda print of a view in the lower ground of the cinema, objects found in the cinema and treated as archeological research finds, study for a genetic modification of a cosmos flower, projection of the color #282320 with an original 35mm cabin projector, 2015-2016.

Built in 1964 and finally closed in 1999, the Kosmos cinema of Plovdiv was for a period the biggest cinema theater in Bulgaria. It has seen 35 years of movie screening, of which 25 years during the communist period. Drawn by the architect Lyubomir Shinkov, the building is massive and shows a certain idea of the future as it was seen in this period, and contributes to a reflection on a history of the image – politic and social- before and after the fall. The color of the cosmos is a quest. A quest through the building and the idea and ideology of the notion of “cosmos”. After questioning some habitants of the city and making a research in the building, Maxime Bondu is traveling through images of the cosmos. Almost like a quest for the invisible, traces are however to be found in some pieces of ceiling paint fallen on the floor, in spiderwebs found in the basements, in an old stained movie program poster or in the deduction of the persistent color from the screen. To deduce this persistent color of the screen, he has set up a collaboration with a programmer, Julien Griffit, with whom he worked previously, to analyze the movies screened. After two weeks of calculations, a powerful server computer wrote down “#282320”, a hexadecimal code for a color. A color that also is difficult to project because of its dark shade.





Exhibition view of Économie de la tension, Parc Saint-Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux, 2016 © Emile Ouroumov



Exhibition view of The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015© Nicolas Brasseur



Exhibition view of Darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île), Le Commun, bâtiment d’ art contemporain, Genève 2015© Raphaëlle Mueller



Exhibition view of The truth will set you free, MAMAC, Nice, 2014

« Johnston creates a star by first tracing the new star on the wall using a template. Each star measures 2¼ inches tall by 2¼ inches wide and half an inch deep; all the stars are six inches apart from each other, as are all the rows. Johnston uses both a pneumatic air hammer and a chisel to carve out the traced pattern. After he finishes carving the star, he cleans the dust and sprays the star black, which as the star ages, fades to gray. »Extract from, The stars on the wall, CIA website.

« You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. »

This verse from Saint John, (Jn 8, 32), is engraved on the left wall ion the entrance hall of the CIA head-quarter at Langley, Virginia, USA. On the same location we can find a memorial wall which honored the employee of the intelligence agency fallen in action. For each agent lost on the field appears a black engra-ved star on the marble wall. When an agent « disappears » , Tom Johnston, the actual stone carver get a template out of a safe, which were created by his mentor, and carve the wall. By using collected datas and deduction, Maxime Bondu reproduce the possible tool used to place and draw a star from the others. This deduced tool is then used to draw stars on a wall which appears as counter-monument. In echo, there is a picture of an advertise of a job offer at the CIA published in the New york times. (April 2nd 1978) on which we can see the ambiguity of an agence created to operate in clandestinity.



Exhibition view of Architeuthis, a prophecy, Kunstunion, Zurich, 2014

We often assume (by belief or superstition) that legendary beings might have special powers and intentions, as well as a project for humanity and the world. The Architeuthis is thus at the centre of ‘Kraken’ by China Miéville, a si-fi novel published in 2010, in which it has a status of divinity. In an end of the world atmosphere, people are united around the belief that binds them and because of which they oppose.

This novel echoes the recent scientific discoveries in this field. In 2004, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori (respectively zoologist and whale watcher) published in the Royal Society ‘The First-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild’, where they relate the observation of a giant squid in its natural environment, 900 meters deep, by a remote controlled robot. In 2011, one year after the publication of the novel, professor Kubodera finally manages to observe the animal with his own eyes for several minutes. The encounter took place at 600 meters deep, after a long and costly expedition, and after a hunt for more than 400 hours; near Chichi Island in the Ogasawara archipelago, east of Japan, the beast appears shorn of its two long tentacles and would by deduction measure between 7 and 8 meters long.Images then observed embody this animal which was before mostly a fantasy, and bring it into a tangible reality. They also make visible the usually blind spaces that are the underwater abysses, which coexist alongside the real world as impenetrable layers of the subconscious […]

Isaline Vuille



Exhibition view of Mémoires d'un amnésique ?, Mains d'Œuvres, Saint-Ouen, 2014© Emile Ouroumov



Exhibition view of Superamas, Technique et Sentiment, Centre d’Art de Neuchâtel, 2013© Emile Ouroumov



Exhibition view of Données insuffisantes pour réponse significative, La Villa du Parc, Annemasse, 2012© Emile Ouroumov



The Daesh Crab, 2017Wall painting, El-Ataya harbor, Kerkennah islands, Tunisia 300 x 250 cm | Photographic triptych, 350 x 165 cm, 2017.Matza Kerkennah residency

Since 2013 in the gulf of Gabès of Tunisia, and a bit later on the Kerkennah islands, the fishermen started to bring up an unusual blue crab from their nets. Bigger and more aggressive than the usual crab, the newcomer migrates in Mediterranean sea since the end of the XIXe. Without any predators, the crab became, in a few years, a true ecological and economical disaster. By destroying nets and mutilating shrimps and school of fishes this new evil weaken the fish economy, witch is already damaged by overfishing and climate changes. In Tunisia this blue crab is called like another serious threat for the country, Daesh.

By painting this crab at El-Etaya harbor, Kerkennah, Tunisia, in a similar way of other fish paintings that we can see on the harbor, Maxime Bondu anticipate a future state of the island. An island forced to respond to its environment and combative. Behind this gesture there is also a view on the religious and economic issues that the post-revolution Tunisia has to deal with.



Devil’s Peak (in beige), 2016 With Léopold Banchini et Daniel Zamarbide (Bureau A)Five faces pyramid distilling fresh water, 160 x 170 cm, concrete bench in shape of a cristal of salt, 180 x 55 x 30 cm, windmill and neon bar translating the wind in morse, 2016.

Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It’s no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.J.G. Ballard, The exhibition atrocity.

Amboy, California, is a town located on the old 66 road in the heart of the mojave desert. Gaz station, post office, trailers, abandoned motel and no fresh water. The ghost town has stories of murders and satanic cults and since the town is at 3 hours from L.A, it’s a recurrent background for Hollywood movies. In front and behind the town, the beige and hot desert continues. The devil’s peak (in beige) is an installation composed of a glass pyramid distilling fresh water from the salty water lying beneath the ground in the primitive bristol lake, a concrete bench in shape of a crystal of salt and a windmill, lightning a neon bar translating the wind in morse language. The installation works as an attempt to translate both the hostile environment and landscape and the fiction narrative surrounding the ghost town.





Devil’s Peak (in white), 2016 With Léopold Banchini et Daniel Zamarbide Video 7' loop, morse code and magazine, 2016.

The Devil’s Peak (in white) is the extra site render of the installation Devil’s Peak (in beige) made in the desert of California. Back home the datas of the recorded scenes of wind blowing through the windmill and activating the neon bar were analyzed. The light sequences were translated in code morse in order to give intelligibility to the wind, ghost of this territory.



Lower Ground, 2016 Framed printing© Emile OuroumovWork presented at the solo show La Couleur du Cosmos, Plovdiv, Bulgarie, 2016.



Cosmos atrosanguineus, 2016 Flowers© Emile OuroumovWork presented at the solo show La Couleur du Cosmos, Plovdiv, Bulgarie, 2016.



Programa, 2015Framed print, ink© Emile OuroumovWork presented at the solo show La Couleur du Cosmos, Plovdiv, Bulgarie, 2016.



24311 Tel-Avivunia Israel

In the summer of 2013, a kestrel was spotted by the inhabitants of Altinayva, a Turkish village in the province of Elazig, while it was hovering. Having caught it, the villagers discovered on its leg a ring on which they could read the following: 24311 TEL AVIVUNIA ISRAEL. Although bird-ringing rules are not uniform throughout the world, it is quite unusual for the place of origin to be so precisely mentioned. In no time suspected of being a spy working for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, the animal was handed over to the local authorities who carried out various examinations, and X-rayed the bird, before admitting that it was not carrying any information devices. They duly let it go. Based as much on the animal’s movements as on the origin of the ring, that suspicion was aired in a tense regional context where any event, no matter how insignificant, can be interpreted in a meaningful if not paranoid way. Perhaps the birds’ freedom of movement, established as it was in a territory encompassing several countries and cocking a snook at borders helped to make it suspect. Based on this news item, Maxime Bondu creates what we might call fiction, or rather a possible historical prospect. Taking the kestrel’s ring number as a reference, he speculates about the contingent espionage potential by way of engraved aluminum plaques as if ready for use for ringing, and whose numbers extend the source reference. And paranoia works its way into the installation: seen from above, isn’t the oddly insignificant Turkish village a theatre of future military operations? And what is the falcon perched on the branch, apparently indifferent, waiting for? What it is watching? As often in Maxime Bondu’s work, the installation functions in a network of interferences like an extension of reality, an almost logical prolongation, but one that diverges slightly, creating a place where, in the discrepancy, fiction makes it possible to look at reality with a keener eye.

Bénédicte Le Pimpec & Isaline Vuille



24311 Tel-Avivunia Israel, 20159 engraved aluminum platesEach plate : 40 x 60 cmWork presented at the group show TÉMOINS, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2017 / Darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île), Le Commun, bâtiment d’ art contemporain, Genève 2015.



Falcon staring at the village, 2015Sticking45 x 65 cmWork presented at the group show TÉMOINS, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2017 / Darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île), Le Commun, bâtiment d’ art contemporain, Genève 2015.



Altinayva from the sky, 2015Scale model 1/220e realized from google-map data170 x 100cmWork presented at the group show TÉMOINS, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2017 / Darker and darker grows the landscape (la possibilité d’une île), Le Commun, bâtiment d’ art contemporain, Genève 2015.



The Remote Viewer, 2015Two wooden chairs, fabrics, two brushed stainless steel pedestals, each base 1 x 1 m.Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.

The Remote viewing is a psychic faculty which seeks to describe a target of any kind (place, event, person …) jointly using intuition and reasoning. The information is perceived at a distance (geographic and temporal) from the target. In September 1980, Elisabeth Targ took part in an experiment. Janice Boughton, who led the experiment, chose four objects that represent the four possible results of the election of the new American president. Each object, hidden from Elizabeth, is placed in a small wooden box. Boughton then asked Targ: “Which object shall I present to you at midnight on election night? » Targ described a white, hollow, conical object with a string attached to the top of the cone. Maxime Bondu went the other way by deducing an artefact from this description, and thus setting out a possible interpretation of the vision of Elisabeth Targ. Continuing then a fortuitous family connection – Elizabeth being the niece of Bobby Fischer, chess world champion – the artist weaves connections between remote viewing and chess, a game that crystallizes intelligence, memory and intuition. Indeed during the world chess championship in Reykjavik in 1972, the Russian side accused the American player of using electronic or chemical devices against Boris Spassky. A few days before, Fischer had demanded the removal of some cameras that were disturbing him. The chairs would be X-rayed and samples of the furniture, the stage and the ambient sent to be analysed. By reproducing the chairs from the images from the cameras, Maxime Bondu seeks to recover the image of the East / West confrontation and any possible interference present. He found such interference when printing out one of the images of the event – in a printing error.

Magalie Meunier





The Deep War, 2015In collaboration with Julien Griffit, LED screen, Computer components, wood, metallic glass.Each showcase 102 x 32 x 13cm, screen 75 x 75 cm base 1 x 1 m.Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.© Nicolas Brasseur



Interference (The Remote Viewer), 2015Digital printing pasted on dibond, 99 x 74 cm.Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.© Nicolas Brasseur



White Hollow Conical, 2015Plaster, rope, oak and engraving, 150 x 16 x 30 cm. Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.© Nicolas Brasseur



White Hollow Conical ... , 2015Engraving on wood melamine, 34 x 39 cm.Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.© Nicolas Brasseur



Postcard, 2015Original Postcard, Ink, 4 pins, 22 x 15 cm.Work presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.© Nicolas Brasseur



L'Ampoule de Livermore (detail), 2015Installation, incandescent bulb permanently lit, 47 x 70 x 45 cm.Work presented at the group show CONTACTS, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2015 / Données insuffisantes pour réponnse significative, Villla du Parc, Centre d'art contemporain, Nice, 2012.

In a way, the Livermore bulb is a living monument to the dawn of scientific progress in the field of artificial light. Installed in 1901 in a firemen’s barracks at Livermore, in central California, it has continuously emitted light for 111 years. Because of this longevity, it has gradually become a symbol, or rather a counter-example, of in-built obsolescence. By recreating this lamp today in an artisanal manner, with the means of an ill-adapted age and by way of the trial and error process, Maxime Bondu reverts to empirical construction, and thus to an historically very important method of scientific exploration. Through its longevity, it seems like a metaphor of what we might call a “planned decline (in growth)”: by reducing its energetic metabolism, the Californian bulb admits decomposition and entropy, but in such a way that it is capable of adapting and surviving for absolutely incredible periods of time.

Extract from « The Slowness of Light »Emile Ouroumov, 2012.





I Pencil, 20159 paper pencils, string, six framed lead drawings, metal pedestal and medium board, variable sizes.© MongolWork presented at the exhibition Économie de la tension, Parc Saint-Léger, Centre d'art contemporain, Pougues-les-Eau, 2016.

I Pencil comes from the eponym texte written by the economist Leonard E.Read (1958). This first person text, describes the genealogy of the pencil Mongol 482 made by The Eberhard Faber Pencil Cie. Speaking and giving his opinion, the pencil describes the complexe implications of his making and his composition by theorizing an ultra liberal capitalism. The work is composed of 6 pages of the text which are drawn with the original pencil and of a shamanic sculpture. The artefact works as a grigri and underlines the beliefs and faith put into the economical system nowadays.



The Rosen Association, Original Plan, 2012-2015Collaboration with Brent Martin , cyanotype, 153,5 x 85 cm.© Nicolas BrasseurWork presented at the group show Mémoires d'un amnésique ?, Mains d'Oeuvres, Saint-Ouen, 2016 / The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015 / 5 MARS 1985, Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris, 2012. Written by Philip K. Dick in 1968, the sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? describes a post-apocalyptic world. The story is set in California and depicts a colonizing society at odds with the ubiquity of androids looking more and more like humans, who gradually slip out of these latters’ control. The powerful biotechnology company controlling their production is called the Rosen Association and exercises lobbying pressure on the government in order to maintain the development of new and even more “human” models. By asking Brent Martin, a Los Angeles-based architect, to draw up construction plans for the Rosen Association’s headquarters and research centre, Maxime Bondu places anticipation in an engaged reality and puts the work somewhere between fictional archival document and project speculating on the possible foreshadowing of a work. With a scenario of expansion established by the artist, the installation of the project is part and parcel of an existing urban plan, taking as its point of departure the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles (the world’s largest baseball stadium), itself built on a vacant lot left by the turbulent uprooting of the Hispanic community living in the Chavez Ravine locality.

Emile Ouroumov



The Rosen Association, precinct print, 2012-2015In collaboration with Brent Martin , cyanotype, 104 x 81 cm.© Nicolas BrasseurWork presented at the solo show The Remote and the Deep War, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, 2015.



Macrotopografic Atlas, Palace of the Museums of Modern Art, 2013Micron scale Atlas of the piece of soil presented as impression under the book. Artisanal bookbinding with golden leave on the cover, 64 x 17 x 42 cm. Work presented at the exhibition L'explorateur, l'atlas et l'aurore, DEL'ART, Art contemporain Côte d'Azur, Nice, 2014.

Maxime Bondu applies a speculative aesthetics of discovery, which is contemplated, interpreted and distorted through the space-time vortex of a mimetic mirror. If his body of works frequently operates in the vicinity of the replica, the specific field allocated to the latter produces unexpected shapes arising from empirical reinvention or a counter-employed tautology, both eventually generating divergent angles of approach. For The Galápagos Principle, the artist proposes a specific production hallmarked by these distinctive features typical of his work. On a formal level, what is involved is an atlas, on a greatly enlarged scale, of the unevennesses of the ground in a space located inside the Palais de Tokyo. The surface represented is identical to the open format of the book produced which, set on a see-through plinth, physically covers the space it refers to. The work’s title (Macrotopographic Atlas, Palace of the Museums of Modern Art, West Wing, Level One, Recess of the Three Domes) refers in a detailed way to this placement and confirms an analogy with a meticulous study with all the appearances of scientific mapping. The highly descriptive focus on an extremely ordinary perimeter evokes an ironical desire for mimetic exhaustiveness and overlapping calling to mind Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris and the life-size map of the Empire, described by Jorge Luis Borges in On Rigour in Science. The excessiveness of these endeavours, which are as meticulous as they are futile, is here pushed to the limit; the obsessive application of seemingly scientific methods introduces a swing towards pseudo-science. As a topographical guide to the art institution that is as complete as it is irreverent, the document produced is intended to be not only equivalent, but above all incomparably superior to the original: in all of 1,250 pages, the iconolatry of the book covers the slightest irregularities of a considerably restricted territory, whose exploration on a micron (A thousandth of a millimetre /0.001 mm) scale gives rise to results whose practical usefulness is uncertain, even if constructed with a powerful critical and storytelling force.

Emile Ouroumov



History of a pulse, 2013Furniture, books and DVDs, C-Prints, variable sizes.Work presented at the exhibition L'explorateur, l'atlas et l'aurore, DEL'ART, Art contemporain Côte d'Azur, Nice, 2014 / 5 MARS 1985, Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris, 2012.

The electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), is a perturbation of the electro-magnetic field which destroy all electronic devices in its area. First discover as a collateral damage of a nuclear explosion, the pulse was experienced from 1962 (Fishbowl operation) by the US by using nuclear missile détonations into the stratosphere in the will to pertube the electro magnetic field and note results. With a strong apocalyptic power, the EMP appears quickly in mass culture by the science fiction literature. The installation shows a collection of EMP occurrences in fiction and a series of restored and colorized pictures from black and white copies of photographes taken on the experiment sites.



Les Possibles, 2012Wood, furniture, 120 x 50 x 80 cm.© Emile OuroumovWork presented at the exhibition Données insuffisantes pour réponnse significative,Villla du Parc, Centre d'art contemporain, Nice, 2012.

The Possibles is a series of wooden reproductions of the different geometric shapes of dice used in games, some for thousands of years, thus conjuring up all the possible and probable choices. The Arabic etymology of the word “hazard” comes from the game of dice. Used in a plastic form, abstracting the numbering marks usually featuring on each die, this repertory of forms of chance takes on a surprisingly analytical and rigorous appearance. Fuelled by this internal contradiction, the work and its polyhedra remain prisoners of a randomness without any useable end purpose, an example of pure and completely abstract chance—like a materialization of the throw of the die which will never do away with chance (Mallarmé). Possibilities also calls to mind Robert Filliou’s famous Eins. Un. One…which, in a somewhat equivalent way, obliges a few thousand hexagonal dice to show just the number 1.

Emile Ouroumov

Documents

Maxime Bondu - Bertrand Lamarche Bondu – Portfolio PORTFOLIO | Portfolio Exhibition view of Architeuthis, a prophecy, Kunstunion, Zurich, 2014 We often assume (by belief or superstition)