‘New Waves’ is a constellation of new and existing works by Bangkok-based Elvire Bonduelle (b. 1981, Paris, FR). Comprising highlights from the artist’s ongoing ‘Thai Pipes’ series of vessels and lighting, a chair (‘Wood is Good’) and low table, several of Bonduelle’s ‘rotating paintings’, and an ad hoc fountain positioned in the gallery’s rear garden, “New Waves” posits a provisional domestic environment populated entirely by items of the artist’s making.

Observing a proliferation of brilliant blue PVC infrastructure upon her arrival in Thailand in 2018, Bonduelle began experimenting with what she would come to call ‘assisted ready-mades’ (in French, 'ready-made aidés’): inherently casual, Duchampian riffs upon existing typologies that alter an object’s purpose with just one or two gestures. While these objects’ subsequent function is not essential to their existence, they often take the form of ‘useful’, occasionally quotidian things by virtue of the fact that these kinds of items often find their way into a would-be user’s everyday: per Bonduelle, “I want art to be present in daily life; thats why I make usual objects.”

In her pursuit of works that infiltrate routine, Bonduelle employs a relentless optimism across mediums, often producing formally joyful work that embraces rudimentary systems, hues, and fabrication methods. Her paintings at times “revel in their own simplicity, the method of their making immediately evident, even to an untrained eye” (K. Sutton, Artforum, 2016).

‘New Waves’ takes its name simultaneously from the French cinematic and international musical movements; from the brush-strokes found on the canvases in the exhibition; from the water that might otherwise run through the turns of adjacent sections of PVC; and from a recently re-appropriated quotation by martial artist Bruce Lee.

Bonduelle is represented by Galerie Van Gelder (Amsterdam, NL), Ronchini Gallery (London, UK), and The Impermanent Collection (Brussels, BE). "New Waves" was her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

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