Bonita Helmer

"Conceptually, Helmer engages with high-level scientific theories, especially in what she sees as the related disciplines of space exploration, particle physics, and the psyche. Visually, she is attracted to naturally occurring and theoretical forms and structures that lend themselves to gestural abstract painting. She refers to the “repeating purity of the supernova,” and delights in the fact, confirmed to her by the scientists she keeps company with, that when it comes to subatomic, theoretical particles, “no one really knows what it looks like!” This freedom to “make it all up” has resulted in a prolific body of work which, while demonstrably abstract, is also both representational and pictorial."

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Excerpt from Shana Nys Dambrot: Artist Profile

Artweek.LA

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While rooted in science, borrowing from the realm of quantum mechanics, her work is a form of artistic hypothesis. The unknown is open to theoretical conjecture. There’s infinite latitude for the artistic supposition of subatomic, theoretical particles, which are virtually invisible.

Excerpt from Megan Abrahams: Art LTD review

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"Helmer's work has been a career long effort to remind us that categorical oppositions are to a great extent artifactual. In her micro and macro visual references to phenomena infinitely larger than us (deep space, the birth of stars) and intimately linked to us / our bodies (cells, vascular systems, air and light), Helmer uses abstract form as a kind of a ritual action and ritual space where she (and we if we are so inclined) investigate the unity of human consciousness and the human condition."

 

Excerpt from Marlena Doktorczyk-Donohue Catalog Essay

Associate Professor of Art History and Contemporary ArtDepartment of Liberal Arts and Sciences Otis College of Art and Design

 

"Helmer's paintings imagine these structures using cues from color-infused Hubble telescopes and scientific technical drawings. The paintings envision the universe as morphing bodies of matter, where hue is almost sexual in its splatttering of seed while being contrained in boxes and corners that are surprising merely by their presence. Each abstracted image seems to be birthing other stars, energies or new languages, sometimes all of these simultaneously. Masses float in space yet are made less than alien by referencing hints of scientific inquiry with faint tracings of formulas, diagrams and charts that are more like apparitions than footnotes. Like images erased on a chalkboard, they remain even if only in powdery traces."

 

Excerpt from Tracey Harnish Review; Here Be Dragons - Space as the Final Frontier

Huffington Post Blogger

 

"The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras proposed that the planets emit their own unique sounds — he called them “orbital resonances” — as they spin through space. These sounds are visually encoded in Bonita Helmer’s paintings. Explosions of light and matter burst through deep blue skies. Stardust rains down through solar curtains. Pomegranates — symbolic of divine fertility — inseminate galaxies. In her heady mix of physics and the kabala, Helmer crafts a visual parallel for the spatial ocean of harmony."

 

Excerpt from Betty Brown Review: Inner Journeys, Outer Vision

Visual Art Source