Art Basel Hong Kong

Chris Bond

23 - 25 Mar 2017

Chris Bond is an Australian painter who uses illusion and fiction in his work to explore notions of knowledge and perception, expectation and plausibility, truth and artifice.

Bond is well known for his carefully crafted, hyper real paintings of books and magazines that appear to be genuine objects. Yet, in Bond’s highly detailed paintings the titles, authors and publishers are all invented, as are the meticulously replicated signs of wear: creases, tears and yellowed pages.

The books are uncannily large, too big for the shelves of any library, impossible to hold or read. That these are genuine objects is a convincing illusion. Each work takes Bond up to three months to complete.

The imagined surfaces, text and library call numbers are all hand painted by Bond. He uses existing, excessively handled, tattered publications as source material painstakingly recreating the degradation in his paintings.

The simulation of these surfaces is an important part of creating the illusion of reality, albeit temporarily. The call numbers invented also contribute to the sense that they belong to an existing system. The apparent plausibility of Bond’s works places the viewer in the uncomfortable position of having to separate fact from fiction.