Drawings and Prints

John Bonath, selected images: 1970-2000

Aperture Gallery, Denver, CO

John Bonath is one of Denver’s most creative and celebrated Photographers/Artists, this wil be his first ever retrospective and will include work from his earliest drawings to his latest body of work including some work never before seen.

“In 1970, I had just received the prestigious Henry Keller Drawing Award from the Cleveland Institute of Art.  That same year I began what was to become my life long fascination with the psychology of the photographic illusion.  Before I made a commitement to this medium, I needed to prove to myself that photography held no expressive limits for me compared to other art media.  To answer this question for myself, I produced a series of drawings ad photographs that related as a consistent series across media and technique boundaries.  It was in this series that I produced my first photographs.  I used a 4×5 camera to photograph smoke formations in one shot.  In another shot I stood in front of the camera in a darkened room and drew in the air with a penlight flashlight.  Then I painted a turkey breastbone white, covered it with glitter and sequins and photographed it blurring in motion.  These three negatives where then sandwiched together in the enlarger and made into a single photographic print.  The rest was history as I made the commitment to pursue the expressive qualities of photography,” said Bonath.

Photographers tend to enter the medium from quite different backgrounds.  John approaches photography from a fine art veiwpoint.  The visual vocabulary of other art media naturally cross-over into his work.  Over the perod of time represented in this exhibit there are examples of many processes including: gum-bichromate, photo-serigraphy, photo-lithography, photo-emulsion on 3-dimensional objects, kwik-printing, handoated platinum printing, photo-drawing, bleaching & toning techniques, straight silver prints, mixed media, color xerography, dye transfer, etching, drawing, wood-block printing, digital ink-jet printing and digital iris-printing.