Background
Ecke was born probably in 1953 in Cairo, Egypt.
Bonk corner, Chaosmos Soundings II / The Observatory, 2011, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Photography: Markus Kaesler.
Bonk corner, photography: Hartmut Nägele.
Ecke was born probably in 1953 in Cairo, Egypt.
Bonk studied history of science and philosophy in Vienna, Munich and Heidelberg, painting with Raimer Jochims, typography with Herbert Bayer in Aspen, Colorado (USA).
Ecke was the designer of graphic concepts for record albums, including Azurety, L'Histoire de Mme. Tasco, and A Notion of Perpetual Motion. In 1985 he worked under Research project of Military Academy Lhasa in Tibet (stereoscopy and signing). In 1995 he was appointed Research Fellow in Edinburgh School of Art. In 2003 he worked at Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. From 2004 he made his researches at University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. In 2004 he also taught at Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen.
Ecke Bonk has written studies on Marcel Duchamp, the modernist artist whose works reflect the influence of Cubism and Futurism and who became one of the leading exponents of Dadaism. Bonk’s work on Duchamp focuses on the Portable Museum, a project also known as Boite en Valise or the Box in a Valise. The Portable Museum is a series of boxes created by Duchamp and his assistants. These boxes contain miniature replicas of Duchamp’s paintings and sculptures. After the first edition appeared in 1941, Duchamp created and exhibited more boxes until his 1968 death. Bonk discusses Duchamp’s work in the monograph Marcel Duchamp - The Box in a Valise: The Making of the Boite-en-Valise de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Selavy, a book translated by David Britt and published as Marcel Duchamp, The Box in a Valise. He also discusses Duchamp’s project in Marcel Duchamp: The Portable Museum. An Inventory.
“It is pointless to produce commentary on Duchamp’s work or document it in anything but the most fastidious way and Ecke Bonk’s unraveling of the history of each of the editions and the manufacture of each of the many items follows in the exemplary footsteps of Duchamp’s most masterly disciple and exegete, Richard Hamilton,” explained Tom Phillips in a Times Literary Supplement review of Marcel Duchamp: The Portable Museum. An Inventory. Phillips likened Duchamp’s installment of his works of art in miniature museums to moves in a vast chess game - a game at which the artist excelled. Art in America contributor Charles F. Stuckey observed that art historians have identified Duchamp’s project either “as a deconstructed form of catalogue raisonne or as a portfolio of replica prints and sculptures.”
His other work includes Allgemeine Typosophie: Ein Handbuch zur Arbeit von Ecke Bonk.
He lives and works in New Zealand.
Quotes from others about the person
Art in America contributor Stuckey concluded: “As a result of Bonk’s investigations, Duchamp’s Boxes can no longer be overlooked as some scholar’s playthings but now must be counted among the most fascinating and technically demanding print/sculpture editions in the history of art.”