ART CITIES:Milan-Monica Bonvicini
Best known for large-scale sculptural installations that employ different materials and mediums, Monica Bonvicini incorporates elements of architecture, performance, photography, video, painting, and collage in her work. Using humor, she confronts issues of subjectivity, power, barriers, control, and institutional critique. Bonvicini’s work establishes a critical connection within the space where it is exhibited, the materials that define it, and the roles of spectator and creator.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galleria Raffaella Cortese Archive
“Our House” Monica Bonvicini’s solo exhibition spreads among the three exhibition spaces of Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan, in the exhibition are on presentation works conceived and produced specifically for the occasion. For the exhibition “Our House” she is literally taking apart the private walls of dwellings in a series of large black and white drawings based on the destruction caused by climate change, from wildfires to hurricanes. The “Diener” sculptures (2017) are covered readymades that turn into something reminiscent of clothes stands. Peculiarly leaning on the wall, these body-sized sculptures are actually braces for concrete walls. Beginning with a series of disaster paintings in 2006, notions of catastrophe and destruction have been recurrent themes for Bonvicini. On presentation are works on paper like: “Galveston, Texas” (2016), “Valley Fire 2015” (2016) or “Yet Untitled (Irene 2011_1)” (2017), that belong to a more recent series focused on man-made catastrophes, mostly homes being destroyed by natural causes, which are the consequences of the effects of global warming. Bonvicini has recently returned to exploring the sociology of walls that, in this show, embraces both private and institutional structures. The artist has been working with walls since her days as a student at Cal Arts, and has produced works such as the large architectural intervention “I Muri” (1991), ”verbrauchte nostalgie” (1993), and “Wallfuckin’” (1996). When Bonvicini first installed “Wallfuckin’” at the Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst in Berlin, which consists of a screen displaying a woman masturbating against wall, Bonvicini was trying to demonstrate how the built environment helps construct gender and sexual identity. By placing such a video into so bare and impartial a setting, the artist demonstrates how sex and politics is never entirely absent from architecture. On the links between sexuality and architecture Bonvicini says “Architecture defines our identity. Books like “Discrimination by Design” by Leslie Kanes Weisman really opened my eyes to how much urban architecture influences us. The home you grow up in, the city you go and start living your life in… it’s definitely these things that define your identity, including your sexual identity. Is that city right or left leaning? Is it dark at night? How a city defines perversions and the physical environment is still an important issue”. In one of the three exhibition spaces, a large-sized exhibition wall is held up from one side by a chain. “Structural Psychodrama # 3” (2017) features a minimal intervention into the space through the use of building material. The dramatization and the role-playing reflect the institutional codex of behaviour associated with the walls of a gallery, both as a place to display art and one to see and understand it.
Info: Galleria Raffaella Cortese, via Stradella 1, via Stradella 4 and via Stradella 7, Milan, Duration: 23/3-26/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-13:00 & 15:00-19:30, www.galleriaraffaellacortese.com
