Monica Bonvicini “RE pleasure RUN “

Mitchell-Innes & Nash (534 W 26th St.)

This event has ended.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents RE pleasure RUN, an exhibition of new works by Berlin-based, Italian artist Monica Bonvicini. The exhibition includes painting, photography, neon works and two new large-scale sculptures, showcasing the artist’s interest in the relationships between gender, architecture and the power dynamics that shape our world. The exhibition is Bonvicini’s debut at Mitchell-Innes & Nash and her first solo show in New York in ten years.

Best known for her large-scale sculptural installations that engage architectural space and the viewer through dry humor, Monica Bonvicini rejects categorization and questions elements of control, gender, and power embedded in images, language and physical space.

The exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash will be anchored around an installation titled Structural Psychodramas #2, in which the artist uses temporary walls in the gallery to create a new architectural environment. The walls will be bare and slightly tilted in order to support small murano glass sculptures. As the title suggests, the work is part of a new series in which the artist uses the walls of institutions and galleries to undermine the structural functionality of such places, while also prescribing them with an open possibility for an imaginary performance.

In addition to the central installation, Bonvicini will also present two large-scale neon light sculptures. One neon sign boldly reads “NO MORE MASTURBATION”. The sign issues an imperative to the viewer but also raises a question about the significance of desire and pleasure in the current hyper-capitalist moment: is pleasure possible without the goal of productivity? This sculpture, as well as the title of the show RE pleasure RUN, is part of Bonvicini’s ongoing investigation into language and its legitimacy as an absolute form of communication.

Two monumental pictorial works will occupy the gallery’s east and west walls. The first, a black-and-white varnish painting in four panels titled Mountain Town 2015 depicts a California house burning from a wildfire, its structure reduced to a bare framework. Beginning with a series of disaster paintings in 2006, notions of catastrophe and destruction have been recurrent themes for Bonvicini. The present work belongs 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.

The second large-scale image is a wallpapered photograph that depicts two male workers building a brick wall. The image recalls a billboard advertisement, but without geographical identifiers and with the workers faces obscured.

While Bonvicini takes advantage of disparate materials and mediums, her works as a whole function as equally significant aspect of her practice. Through an ongoing engagement of physical and psychological space, the viewer becomes an integral, yet indiscernible, part of the work.

About Monica Bonvicini
Best known for large-scale sculptural installations, Monica Bonvicini incorporates elements of architecture, performance, photography, video, painting, and collage in her work. Using dry and direct humor, she confronts issues of subjectivity, power, barriers, control, and institutional critique. Bonvicini’s art establishes a critical connection with the space where it is exhibited, the materials that define it, and the roles of the spectator and the creator.

Bonvicini was born in Venice, Italy in 1965 and currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin (now known as the Universität der Künste) and at the California Institute of the Arts. Since 2003, she has held a position as Professor for Performative Arts and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Bonvinci’s work has been featured in many prominent biennials, including the Berlin Biennale (1998; 2003; 2014); La TriennaIe, Paris (2012); the Istanbul Biennale (2003), and the Venice Biennale (1999; 2001; 2005; 2011; 2015). She has had solo exhibitions at BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art (2016/17), the Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany (2013); the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (2012); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2011); the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2011); the Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2009); the Modern Art Oxford, UK (2003); and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002). Bonvicini also received the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999) and was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2012.

Two large permanent sculptures in public spaces —She Lies, a sculpture floating on the Oslofjord in front of the Opera House in Oslo, Norway, and RUN, a large-scale mirror sculpture at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London which turns into a psychedelic light effect at night— show her involvement with advanced architectural technologies and her complex interaction with the urban and social texture.