Exhibition of Paul Bonet's Bookbinding Designs Curated by Florian Pumhösl at Galerie Buchholz

Galerie Buchholz in New York presents an exhibition of drawings by French bookbinder Paul Bonet, curated by artist Florian Pumhösl, running through 16 June 2018. The show features a selection of Bonet's designs, highlighting his work on volumes for poets like Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Valéry from the 1920s onward. Bonet's inventive covers blend biomorphic patterns with industrial geometries, including a sketch for Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes' (1918) that spells out the poet's name using the full name itself. Pumhösl organized the exhibition after encountering Bonet's designs in French antiquarian bookshops, creating special display cases to evoke that environment. One case collects jacket designs for sheet music by composers such as Wagner, Liszt, and Chopin, while another focuses solely on book spines. The exhibition offers a detailed look at the craft of bookbinding, emphasizing the meticulous details and playful, sometimes wacky, perversity in Bonet's work. It opened during the Frieze New York art fair period, providing a contrast to the event's frenetic pace by inviting focused attention on artistic craftsmanship. The show was featured as an online exclusive on 5 May 2018, underscoring its significance in contemporary art coverage.