Não sou um homem, sou uma montanha (I am not a man, I am a mountain) | drawing and painting

‘With the staging of his death in MB#9 and the presentation of an exhibition at Galeria 3+1 entitled Morgue, one could guess a change of direction in Bonneville’s work, or at least suspect the will to do so. The work was no longer interested in the past, the family history or the introspection of someone who defined himself publicly. From that moment on, the exposed body was no longer just physical matter or the social or psychological body, but rather someone who is looking to outline himself in confrontation with art itself.

Hence the importance of Miguel Bonneville being António de Macedo, being Simone de Beauvoir, being Agustina Bessa-Luís and increasingly erasing himself, ceasing to be a man in order to gain other contours, to transfigure himself into other people and become other things such as, for example, a mountain, an abstract body, an extension of territory, a coating over the exotic. Deep down, becoming a vanitas painting, of course, but never failing to being Miguel Bonneville - although pursuing this attempt to make himself disappear altogether, as is the case in this exhibition: Miguel Bonneville decomposed in a landscape, Miguel Bonneville reduced to a line, Miguel Bonneville devoured by a pink layer.’

- Diogo Bento

7th – 28th of March 2015, Museu Geológico de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal