Malcolm Bonney Mexican City Cycle

Malcolm Bonney's INSERCOES EM CIRCUITOS IDEOLOGICOS (Insertions into ideological circuits)

Alludes to the frame as a transgressive mechanism. The disjunction between center and frame suggests the break between memory and the flux of immediate experience. Process and materials became essential to content. Inspired by Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and the image of the vaguely Deco, tunnel shape vision as a spatial corridor recedes behind the figure.

Painting records and the use of sound equipment were components of these works. Fascinated by Mexico’s irreducible mystery at the heart of Indian culture and the “Open Air Movement, and the post–ruptura generation,” expressed by muralists as Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqeiros. Neo-barbarian style of Mexican muralists and Art Brut. I was also inspired by Russian tone painters like Rimsky-Korsakoff and Stravinsky perchant for stretching the horizons of typical forms. The inadequacy of paint to convey energy, I turned to scoring and tearing sheets of metal. Thin and thick pieces of copper and brass. There is a residue of picture-making in the effect of fragmentation, recall Boccionis painted abstract “dynamisms”. I create scenes and figures in which meaning emerged from webs of associations.I manipulated found objects into formal conundrums. This is a different more lyrical kind of ghost in the machine, capturing the poignancy of outcast and discarded objects promoting age and experience in a culture in a culture that continues to insist on the new, pushing the limits of representation and exploring varied modes of personal expression. I felt I was driven by a Dionysian fervor for exploration of psychological states and emotions.
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