calendario eventi  :: 

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26/8/2010

Two exhibitions

Fridericianum, Kassel

Monica Bonvicini - Both Ends

In her art, Monica Bonvicini raises issues regarding gender and power relationships in all kinds of contexts. At the centre of her work are architecture and public spaces, the world of labour, sexuality, as well as politics and representation, whose close connections she reveals. Bonvicini investigates the inner logic of public and private spaces, examines the interrelationship between physical and social space, and deconstructs the connection between function, addressee and aesthetics in architecture. In this investigation, the identity-defining aspect of people’s perception of the space surrounding them plays a key role. In Bonvicini’s eyes, buildings as well as urban and suburban infrastructure are by no means neutral, but on the contrary obsessive, politically ideological, and sexualised.

Sexual determination of specific spaces, professions, and certain modes of behaviour is repeatedly a focus of Monica Bonvicini’s work. The artist engages with architecture as a traditionally male domain, with the occupational image of construction workers and the resulting clichés, and explores the mechanisms underlying stereotypes. She puts materials such as latex, leather, steel and concrete — which due to their properties have social connotations — in unexpected contexts, creating new links. In her series Leather Tools, 2004-2009, Bonvicini had different tools clad with black leather and thus transformed them, due to the purely associative power of the material, into a fetish.

Bonvicini often creates situations in which the viewer is called upon to act. Under the title Don’t Miss A Sec.’, 2004, she put a portable toilet in the middle of the forecourt of the Art Basel fair grounds. The mirrored walls of the cabin were designed so that people outside could not see inside, but the person inside could see out. The construction aroused insecurity and anxiety in users, because the boundary between participation in public life and the intimate moment of going to the toilet was blurred. While not as participatory, the work NOT FOR YOU, 2007, confronts viewers just as directly: in metres-high illuminated letters attached to a steel scaffolding the title of the work was emblazoned across the corner of two walls in the otherwise empty exhibition room.

The lettering was not illuminated by neon light, but rather the surfaces of the oversized letters contained two rows of light bulbs which lit up garishly in a rhythm. While on the one hand visitors were unable to escape the visual stimulus, on the other they were rebuffed by the literal message “Not for you”. In this way, with both verbal brutality and conceptual subtleness Monica Bonvicini hinted at a class society in the cultural sphere in which contemporary art has become an exclusive status symbol of an at once hermetic and elite circle. NOT FOR YOU addresses the problem of the role of the viewer, as well as the function of the exhibition space, which, despite the fact that there was nothing on the floor, seemed overloaded by the size and bright light of the lettering. Bonvicini makes the location of art — including the institution and its protagonists — a subject of art, and in this particular case, a target of artistic criticism denouncing the prevailing conditions of the institutional system.

At the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, conceptual works, sculptural works and large, space-filling installations will all be presented. The combination illustrates the artist’s formal diversity and continuity in terms of content. While her oeuvre reflects an explicitly political attitude, it never simply conveys her position using artistic means. Rather, Bonvicini repeatedly seeks a confrontation on an artistic level as well, by breaking with routine representations and traditional viewing habits.

„I decided to try art because it was the only way to be a worker and an intellectual at the same time.” Monica Bonvicini

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Matias Faldbakken - That Death of Which One Does Not Die

The Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken is internationally well known for his direct, provocative and radical attitude. In his artistic production Faldbakken engages with social conventions and meets pop culture with a counter gesture, when rejection and refusal merge with forms of chaos and vandalism. The media and products evolving from pop societies and determining social systems of order, do not only serve him as a conceptual starting point but also as artistic tools. Whereas material and objects from the everyday cultural production like newspapers, magazines, TV, video and the Internet, as well as spray paint, tape and markers belong to his working material, language plays a central role in his oeuvre. Text-based works as large wall installations, as works on canvas, drawings, prints and graffiti are drawing a continuous line through his whole artistic work and are building the tenor of an all-out attitude of denial. Against this background Faldbakken’s recent works are of an extreme and radical adoption of the nihilistic basic idea.

Reduction and abstraction as means of turning ones back to the world as well as a destructive gesture, which expresses itself in the spontaneous act and a demolishing process, conduce Matias Faldbakken to an artistic attitude, which also manifests an anti-aesthetic, explicitly directed by the artist against the conventional art production. In his recent works Faldbakken is using and at the same time mocking the artistic practice by showing destructed sculptural everyday objects like metal lockers and news racks or serialises a production in either sometimes framed prints or sometimes plastic bags which he further works on. This artistic attitude will also be transposed in his solo show THAT DEATH OF WHICH ONE DOES NOT DIE at Kunsthalle Fridericianum. With the background of the long tradition of the house as a museum and renowned exhibition venue Faldbakken designs a counter concept, which does arise in a very salon-like presentation on the one hand and on the other in the material and visual reduction as well as in a vandalistic gesture. By both playing with and opposing the architecture of the generous gallery space, the artist will present a series of more than thirty new works of the ‘Garbage Bag Drawings’, which will dominate the whole exhibition space.

These works, which can be understood as a development of the well-known Tape-series and which are especially produced for this exhibition, will show abstract abbreviations and acronyms, which are drawn sketchily and sleazy with a black marker on large garbage bags. The bags themselves are framed uniformly and precisely and therewith evoke a direct confrontation with the conventional presentation of art. Following this motivation the ‘Garbage Bag Drawings’ will dominate the main wing of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum. Hung up neatly and in order only the drawings will refer to a certain irregularity, which dissolves in complete disorder and chaos in the side wing of the museum. There the bags will mostly be unframed and hung up without a visible regular structure, sometimes overlapping themselves, sometimes covering the windows. This dissolution of regularity into chaos will be supported by an installation with fire extinguishing foam, a colaboration with Anders Nordby, partially covering the walls and a large part of the floor, so the material is carried and spread by the visitors. Here destruction and vandalism are building the corner stones of an art production, which in the end negates itself.

Image: Matias Faldbakken, Shocked into Abstraction, Installation view

Press contact: Christine Messerschmidt
Tel. +49 561 7072786 Fax +49 561 7072775
messerschmidt@fridericianum-kassel.de

Vernissage friday 27.08.10 h 7 p.m.

Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18, D-34117 Kassel
Opening hours: Wednesday - Sunday 11 am - 6 pm
Amission normal: 5 €, reduced*: 3 €
Group: 3 € per person
children up to the age of 12 have free access
Admission is free for all visitors on wednesdays

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