christinebonnet

Painter / Author photographer

Born in 1958
Live and work in Alsace

Training

An encounter with Erdal Alantar gave me the envy and the feel for painting.
I discover the strength of art while working alongside him, the sensitivity to materials, their resources and their richness, the pleasure of the gest, but also the challenge of painting and the difficulties to overcome.

I develop the printing techniques at “Atelier 63” of Joëlle Serve, president of the “Trace” association in Paris. I then install a printing press in my art studio and work mainly with aquatint and etching.

For a grater freedom in painting, I performed my own research for materials and the mastering of mediums: this personal work extends the workshops that I attended at the “Atelier C” of JP Brazs in Paris.

Lately, I taught myself photography, yet a new adventure.

My choices

Two themes shaped my work during all these years, the Self and the World.

The inner self deploys feelings that, like an inner impulsion mark the rhythm of life, show up in facial expressions. This inner world generates forces for stimulation and expresses itself with forms such as music, painting, or writing.

It is the life that within self spreads and spills. I have painted and printed it, today it is with words that I like talking about it.

And then, there is the World…, our world in which we wander, that I paint and photograph. In its dynamics and its diversity, the energy is ever present. Faced with the secret life of things, it is its beauty, its ampleness and its frailty that astound me. In the heart of its nature, the rhythms of its majestic order engrave themselves in all shapes and forms, the structures and the phenomenon that it displays, from the grandiose to the minute.

My feeling is a reality, a certitude that guides my work, and I scrutinize that has affected me. How to express it relies on the means to employ. These technical means must combine in such a way that the artwork, the source of my inspiration, and my emotion are tightly united.

The form that I give it is the search for an artistic prose where poetry stands out through the material. This poetry expresses the living.

Today

The power of shapes and the poetic eloquence are the engines that move me; they are what I dive in with utmost pleasure, in painting as in photography. These two modes of artistic expressions are different experiences that play on each other, echoes of one to the other.

Territory of the inner self, the art studio is a particular place.
This place is where everything is possible, searches, perseverance, doubts, and reminiscences.
In the always renewed act that is the pictorial expression, this place is where I find myself, makes me dig deep inside and inspires me to do greater things.

In a spontaneous expression, painting has become the space where sensible feeling is caught in the colors, the material and the shapes that are mine. Forces and rhythms let happen the shape that appears, linking the sensible and the act. And, in this ever present back and forth between the canvas and me, this barely noticeable breath, the breath of life itself, finally finds its rightful place.

All the attention today is geared towards the instant sensation; the artwork has become pulsation. I look at it in a manner to search the right level of free play with the material. The sense is no longer only in the approach of the theme, but in the expression of the original feeling that is substantiated with the material and the shape that comes to life, experiencing a oneness with it.
The artwork is its resonance.

The ethic of my artistic endeavor is the application of this expression. I seem to remember I have felt that from the start.

I have come to photography a few years ago, and I have been painting for more than 30 years. I have a feeling that my journey as a painter orients my vision as a photographer in the shapes, textures, colors and contrasts, but also in the rhythm of the lines and the harmony of tints.
What photography enables me to do is live this experience in direct correlation with the reality of the moment, the surprise of the discovery, the account of a meeting with what our world has to offer in light of the rhythms that animate it.

I like delving in that, to live this freshness of the moment, with feeling, fully aware, with a sentiment of affection born from the intimate unity between the self and what emerges. Photography is thus the expression of conservation, of an instant full of emotion, when at the same time in front of it and in it, I live fully my link with the world.

Main personal exhibitions

Galerie RemPART – Eguisheim

• Cave de Ribeauvillé (with Gaby Kretz, sculptor) – Ribeauvillé
• Gallery La Maison d’Art – Strasbourg
• GSA – Strasbourg
• UGC Georges V – Champs Elysées, Paris
• Espace Gainville – Aulnay sous bois
• Bac Art Studio – Venise
• Gallery Grillon – Paris
• Scène jazz Duc des Lombards – Paris

  Main group exhibitions
  

• Rencontres Photographiques- Breitenbach

• AIDA Gallery – Strasbourg
• Gallery La Ligne Bleue – Sélestat
• Viaduc des Arts – Paris
• Ateliers Moret – Paris
• Salle Pleyel – Paris
• La Grande Maison – Bures sur Yvette
• Gallery Daudet – Toulouse
• Gallery de Neuilly – Neuilly sur Seine
• Chapelle de la Sorbonne – Paris
• Basilique Saint Marc – Héraklion
• Institut français d’Athènes – Athènes

Main art fairs

8e Rendez vous Image. Salon photo. Palais des Congrès. Strasbourg

• PRINT FAIR – New York
• MIART – Milan
• SAGA – Paris
• Biennale Internationale Québec France – Québec
• Biennale de gravure – Ermont

Awards

Prix COROT , Prix CHARBONNEL, Mention d’honneur Biennale de Québec

Signed, dated, numbered to 30 prints.
Certificate of authenticity.

Paper Media:

Hahnemühle papers for high-end digital printing.
“Archive quality ISO 9706”
Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310g
Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth 305g

Pigment inks EPSON :

Epson UltraChrome™ K3
With Epson Stylus Pro 3880
( Inks and printer corresponde to Digigraphy criteria )

Certification ” Digigraphy®” :

All photographs printed  with Hahnemühle PhotoRag Bright White 310g paper get “ Digigraphy® Certification”

Hahnemühle certificat of authenticity & Hologram System

Each certificate is made of premium deckle edged mould made paper with a Hahnemühle watermark and fluorescent security fibres. A serialized numbered hologram should be added. A second, identically numbered hologram should then be applied to the reverse side of the artwork.
The combination of certificate and hologram assures that each Certificate of Authenticity relates to one particular piece of art.Text and layout of the certificate can be created individually.