CvB Singles Uptown Remix presents a survey of work created since 2000—rags, mushrooms, a “soft” fence, an enormous octopus and other curious objects from Cosima's diverse oeuvre.
Von Bonin is famous for her deep-seated distrust of the “professional” artist—the assumed expert in matters of aesthetic self-importance. Instead her creative impulse could originate in some urban tale, possibly propelled further by a studio assistant, and perhaps completed by a museum guard or installer: all experts in their own arenas. Bonin's art happens somewhere in the process of translation, but if her career is filtered through a 25-year long apprenticeship in art-making, then a greatest hits show presents a conundrum: each title is formally complete and exquisite.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York, from September 16 to October 31, 2015.
Cosima von Bonin (born 1962 in Mombasa, lives in Cologne) began her career in the early 1990s, following in the footsteps of Martin Kippenberger. A prolific artist, she produced oversized stuffed animals and other fantastical creatures, as well as pseudo-Minimalist sculptures using comedy, cartoons, and pop culture to question social constructions and relations. She explores the relationship of the individual to work, the capitalist production system, and leisure society. She uses knitted and woven fabrics to create objects that enable her to mock industrial means of production, which she feels infantilize the individual. By advocating a life of dolce far niente, of carefree idleness, von Bonin is proposing a form of resistance against the consumerist regime. Her exhibitions include the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Mudam Luxembourg, both 2024; Magasin III Jaffa, Tel Aviv (2019); CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson (2018); and Sculpture Center, New York (2016). She participated in the 59th Biennale di Venezia (2022); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017); Glasgow International (2016); MUMOK, Vienna (2014); Artipelag, Sweden (2013); Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2011); Arnolfini, Bristol (2011); Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva (2011); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2008); and Documenta, Kassel (2007 & 1982).
