About Bob Nonnemacher’s Art
by Mimi Peterson, Co-Founder, Vital Art Project
The true power of Bob Nonnemacher’s constructions lies in process, historic connotation, and color theory. They communicate the primitive idea that a point defines an exact location in space and time. A dot represents a color. A pixel is a basic picture element on an electronic screen, visible as color and/or light. Nonnemacher references these technological matrixes in his innovative work. He connects the variables in his methodological process. After painting both sides of one canvas, Bob cuts it into a myriad of small pieces. The integral parts are graphically organized and inlaid onto a second canvas surface to become one physical piece. The work invites viewer participation and stimulates the perception that his lively marks and gestures evolve into a web of topographies.
North South East West by Bob Nonnemacher
Rejecting chaos-based aesthetic notions, Nonnemacher delineates taut patterns whose lines and points conflate into complex, well-calculated geometric compositions. Vivid points of color commingle creating optics associated with 19th Century France - Pointillism (George Saurât, painter), textile ombré design and printing (blending and shading of one color hue with another), and the Jacquard textile loom, an Industrial Revolution computer program (punch cards). Today’s Information Age is characterized by digital imagery (pixels or color dots). Nonnemacher’s painterly investigations have commonalities with each of these seemingly obscure influences, such as, saturated colors, morphing of painted dots, and using wet and dry pigment.
I find that creatives produce visual and written codification of experiences and imagination that mirrors our art and culture intellectual mindset. Everything has a history on which new ideas are built. Art signifies future. Bob Nonnemacher’s pixelated geometric constructions are avant-garde concepts rooted in historical developments. His work seems likely to set the world on fire with vibrant bursts of color-filled life.
Look closer, think deeper.
Mimi Peterson, Vital Art Project, Racine WI
Visit Bob Nonnemacher’s Gallery of Art here.
