Installation
views
Works
Cosima von Bonin
MAE DAY I (PINK MAE WEST VELVET VERSION WITH LOBSTER, M.W. MIRROR PROP AND FLOWERPOT, 2022
Mixed Media
Overall 47.24 x 25.98 x 35.43 inches / 120 x 66 x 90 cm
Base 26.18 x 22.05 x 22.05 inches / 66.5 x 56 x 56 cm
Cosima von Bonin
MAE DAY II (PINK STRIPED VELVET VERSION WITH FAN AND BENCH), 2022
Mixed Media
Overall 43.31 x 71.26 x 29.92 inches / 110 x 181 x 76 cm
Base 15.16 x 71.26 x 19.69 inches / 38.5 x 181 x 50 cm
Cosima von Bonin
MAE DAY III DISH RAG VERSION WITH M. W. SCARF AND TURTLE BOX) & MAE DAY IV (LINNEN VERSION WITH FAN AND TURTLE BOX), 2022
Mixed Media
Overall 69.69 x 39.37 x 64.96 inches / 177 x 100 x 165 cm
Cosima von Bonin
MAE DAY V (GREY BROWN CHECKED VERSION WITH FAN AND STEPP LADDER), 2022
Mixed Media
Overall 82.68 x 25.98 x 47.24 inches / 210 x 66 x 120 cm
Base 66.14 x 14.57 x 47.24 inches / 168 x 37 x 120 cm
Cosima von Bonin
nothing succeeds like excess, 2019/2021
Paper, wood, steel, foam, rubber, and velvet
45.28 x 92.52 x 66.93 inches
115 x 235 x 170 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Privato, 2022
Iron, lacquer
11.81 x 43.31 inches
30 x 110 cm
Julien Ceccaldi
Palatable Pearls, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 x 1.5 inches
152.4 x 121.9 x 3.8 cm
Signed on verso
Julien Ceccaldi
Francis From the Back, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 x 1.5 inches
152.4 x 121.9 x 3.8 cm
Signed on verso
Julien Ceccaldi
Violet Bedsheets, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 x 1.5 inches
152.4 x 121.9 x 3.8 cm
Signed on verso
Julien Ceccaldi
Girly Bedroom, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 x 1.5 inches
152.4 x 121.9 x 3.8 cm
Signed on verso
Julien Ceccaldi
Francis, Marie-Claude, Charlotte and Charlotte’s brother (Set of four dining chairs), 2022
Chair (white/birch), acryl
31.89 x 18.11 x 20.08 inches
81 x 46 x 51 cm
Signed
Gaga is pleased to present HETERO, the second exhibition of Cosima von Bonin at GAGA, first in our LA location.
As it was the case with Shit and Chanel, HETERO is the result of an expansive WhatsApp dialogue between the artist and the gallerists. This time, unlike the last, even the install was done through video calls. This year plans have changed for everyone, we have had to change dates and locations for this show twice and the artist could not make her way to Los Angeles. But maybe the show has embedded in it the traces of this moment, marked by remote working and new socializing modes. We can’t avoid missing her physical presence. But who knows, by being present in every decision and detail in the show, we have the feeling that we can hear her laugh and maybe find her in this gingerbread house for adult Hansels and Gretels.
As one walks into the gallery, the first thing we encounter is LOVE/HATE behind which hides a secret (furtive) smoker lounge that serves as an anteroom to an amusement park of hard to decipher amusements. We do not know if we are entering the house of horrors or a fun house. Probably none of the above or both at the same time: the house of mirrors where we see the deformed and therefore an even more precise reflection of the adult children we are. Fragile and shy like the characters we see in the show, but voracious, seduced and fascinated by the gingerbread house that has its real place in our subconscious. And just like that the installation unfolds emphasizing the back side of the works which become just as important, or even more important, than the front side for those who like to see ´the other side of things´. Screens create crushing spaces. Fences make sure we keep our distance but at the same time invite us in.
More than a script (discourse, meaning or slogan) Cosima has elaborated on a color palette, worthy of the most exquisite interior decorator, the perfect set for our interior and the mise-en-scene of our most shameful desires and nightmares.
Here nothing is what it seems which could be said in another way; that a rose is not a rose is not a rose. Front / back, love / hate, more than opposites in tension, binary posed or confronted, the work seems to embrace kindly the contradictions and everything in between. Hetero? Heterosexual or Heterodox? A rose is not a rose but sometimes a rose that is not a rose could also be a rose.
Flags that are not banners but axes, axes that are not weapons but toys, toys that are words, and words that are sculptures. Sculptures that become fences and fences that become hashtags. Hashtags that are not trending, nor proposing any slogan, but some tarot card of ambiguous significance, radical surfaces that work as a screen where we project. Magic mirrors.
Luis Felipe Fabre, Mexico DF 15 de Agosto 2020
Fernando Mesta, Los Angeles, August 2020
Installation
views
Works
Cosima von Bonin
Axe, 2020
Wood, steel and synthetic resin varnish
15 x 6.25 x 1 inches
38.1 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm
Ed 1/20 + 5AP
Cosima von Bonin
Cute (black), 2020
Styrofoam, fiberglass and resin
18.75 x 39 x 18.5 inches
47.6 99.1 x 47 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Hetero, 2020
Velvet, mohair, cotton, metal, box
99 x 69 x 29 inches
251.5 x 175.3 x 73.7 cm
Cosima von Bonin
LOVE/HATE, 2011
Jute sacking, cotton
77.17 x 106.3 inches
196 x 270 cm
Cosima von Bonin
The Loser (black and white version), 2020
PVC, fiberglass, epoxy
86.6 x 22.2 inches
220 x 56.4 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Fence (short version), 2020
Velvet, foam, steel
53 x 45.25 x 10 inches
134.6 x 114.9 x 22.9 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Thumper Bubbling (version 1), 2020
Cotton
82.75 x 59 x 1.75 inches
210.2 x 149.9 x 4.4 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Fence (corner version), 2020
Velvet, foam, steel
101 x 45.25 x 56 inches
256.5 x 114.9 x 142.2 cm
Cosima von Bonin
I Love Rilke, 2020
Velvet, cotton
76.5 x 64.75 inches
194.3 x 164.5 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Faust, 2020
Cotton
107.87 x 85.43 x 1.57 inches
274 x 217 x 4 cm
Cosima von Bonin
The Loser (green silver version), 2020
PVC, fiberglass, epoxy
86.6 x 22.2 inches
220 x 56.4 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Cute (pink), 2020
Styrofoam, fiberglass and resin
18.75 x 39 x 18.5 inches
47.6 99.1 x 47 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Thumper Bubbling (version 1), 2020
Cotton
82.75 x 59 x 1.75 inches
210.2 x 149.9 x 4.4 cm
Cosima von Bonin
Fence (long version), 2020
Velvet, foam, steel
100 x 45.25 x 56 inches
254 x 114.9 x 22.9 cm
Cosima von Bonin
MacArthur Park, 2020
Cotton, steel
85.5 x 89.75, 34 x 34 x 27.5, 28.25 x 30.25 x 27.5 inches
Cosima von Bonin
Smoke, 2008
Acrylic, LED, electronic transformer, neon and steel
60.24 x 24.8 x 3.54 inches
153 x 63 x 9 cm
Gaga is pleased to present Shit & Chanel, Cosima von Bonin’s first exhibition in Mexico. Cosima von Bonin (Mombasa, Kenya, 1962), whose name reminds us of a famous Renaissance banker, lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Her practice has unfolded in the orbit of artists such as Martin Kippenberger, Isa Genzken, Michael Krebber and Josef Strau, to name a few. Her work is characterized by constant collaboration with musicians, DJs, performers, architects, technicians and installers to the point that the artist boasts of not knowing how to make or do anything … “everything is stolen”, she says.
The show produced by the gallery following the artist’s instructions sent from her bed via WhatsApp consists of four canvases made by her everlasting collaborator Julia Koep, three faux concrete mixers orchestrated by Marcela Derbez and a accessorized soft sculpture.
The canvases, conceived from a GIF that Cosima shared with Fernando, show Daffy Duck fighting against darkness, almost always defeated but resisting in a sort of sisyphean-loop. The quarrelsome character of Daffy is close to the artist, reappearing every now and then (another loop) in her work.
A drove of trans-species stuffed pigs lie dead or just exhausted on a stainless steel plate in a motionless ballet of cake slices. Another group of pigs is incarcerated in a concrete mixer bound by oversized handcuffs and inflatable pikes as toys evoking an unknown sexual practice (to some) that transforms the gallery into an improbable sex dungeon.
Two other mixers, one of handcuffed blue lobster claws and another covered with orange crochet, complete the exhibition, evoking a perverse reminiscence of the artist’s family business within the concrete industry. Three stories in which the softness of the plush toys and the fabric of disguise are torn, revealing the perverse and cruel backdrop that lies at the bottom of children’s tales.
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,” wrote Rilke − but desolation is real even if you try to disguise it under the harmless aspect of stuffed animals or pretend to exorcise it with humor. And it is in the face of this terror that Cosima’s networks of collaboration and dialogue with other artists and agents are put into action. Human interrelation reveals itself as the real resistance to this devastating panorama.
A performance by Mary Messhausen, Proddy Produzentin and Leche de Tortuga is planned for the opening day, which threatens to have its way with Cosima von Bonin’s work.
Installation
views
