Monica Bonvicini
I Don't Like You Very Much
22.04.-21.08.2022
About the exhibition
The house, as the location for the construction of identity, as the domestic site in which relationships and desires are shaped, is a theme that Monica Bonvicini has been exploring since the early 1990s in works such as HausFrau Swinging and Wallfuckin’. Destruction, natural disaster and climate crisis have been on her mind since the 1992 photo series Where Air Dwells, and over the last 15 years in her series of large black and white drawings, Hurricanes and other Catastrophes.
Monica Bonvicini's exhibition for Kunsthaus Graz is centred on themes that lie at the core of the artist’s research: an examination of architecture, literature and the construction of sexual and gender identity.
Following the show at OGR in Turin, the large-scale architectural sculpture As Walls Keep Shifting is presented in Graz in a state of complete but calculated disaster. Half of a family house reconstructed in 1:1 scale is scattered across the exhibition space, as if a hurricane has just passed through and torn the structure apart.
The show at Kunsthaus Graz starts with the video work I See a White Building, Pink and Blue (2020), which also provides the soundtrack for all of the installations. Other works included are the carpet of photos Breach of Décor (2020), the photo series Italian Homes (2019) as well as the cast of a little broom, Swept Away (2019). Accompanying the structure of As Walls Keep Shifting, a large print will be installed that is made up of collages of commercials and calendars featuring lots of skin. The mix of naked bodies, desires and ambitions as well as the use of bodies as commodity is also a key theme for the artist, who has also explored these issues in paper works such as Neck to Knees (2016) and Hard Strings (2017), and the series of Eternmales drawings (2000).
The question of home, commodity, desire and sex is continued in a new work, treating elements of fetish as sculptural and performative objects that invite the public – within the institutional context of the museum – to live out the voyeurism that is intrinsic to all museum visits.
About Monica Bonvicini
Monica Bonvicini (* 1965 in Venice) studied art in Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, CA. From 2003 until 2017 she was teaching Performative Arts and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, since 2017, she holds the professorship for Sculpture at the Universität der Künste Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.
In her multifaceted practice, Monica Bonvicini investigates the structures of power that govern gender, sexuality, space, environment, and institutions – dry-humored, direct, and imbued with historical, political, and social references.
Bonvicini has earned several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Biennale di Venezia (1999), the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2005), the Hans Platschek Prize for art and writing (2019), and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize (2020). Her work has been featured in many prominent biennials, including Berlin, La TriennaIe Paris, Istanbul and Venice. Since her first solo show at the Cal Arts in 1991 she has had major solo exhibitions (selection) at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), Kunstmuseum Basel (2009), the Art Institute of Chicago (2009), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2012), BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art (2016), Berlinische Galerie (2017), Belvedere 21 (2019), OGR Torino (2019), and Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2020). Bonvicini’s works are represented in numerous museum collections and permanently installed pieces can be found in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, on the fjord adjacent to the Oslo Opera House, and in the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue in collaboration with the Kunst Museum Winterthur (09.09.2022-20.11.2022), which will be published in October 2022.
Gallery
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