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Like many artists with a scientific/spiritual bent, John Bonick tries to visualize infinity. Entanglement, his latest series of nature-inspired paintings, consists of curvilinear geometric shapes set atop “shadow” forms that echo those on the surface. The interaction between those bold, hard-edged shapes and their faint, subsurface counterparts produces an Op-like energy that ricochets along labyrinthian paths. Like fractals, these paintings unfold kaleidoscopically, as if exponentially greater levels of magnification were thrust into view with every backward step. At close range they are unremarkable; but starting at a distance of about 10 feet, these recursive shapes begin to writhe, merge and change places, an effect that continues as you step further and further away.
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Bonick approaches it as a process painter, keeping Max Ernst’s dictum (“Keep the object outside of your reach and you will create it endlessly”) firmly in mind as he searches for ways to convey the notion of a universal energy that flows in and around the invisible particles that make up all living things.