Plastered, 1998
Courtesy the artist | Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany, 2010
© Bildrecht, Vienna, 2017
© Bildrecht, Vienna, 2017
Collection
Drywall panels and styrofoam
Dimensions variable
First exhibited at the 1998 Vienna Secession, Plastered is a now-iconic installation that the artist has since re-created 23 times. Bonvicini presents an entire gallery floor constructed out of panels of thin, unfinished plasterboard, placed atop sheets of polystyrene foam. An apparently random pattern of holes placed in the support layer, however, initiates the weakening and eventual cracking of the sheetrock under the weight of people moving through the space. Thus, the once clean, unspoiled flooring is progressively compromised and fragmented over the course of the exhibition, until only rubble remains. Literally built in order to be destroyed, Plastered achieves its artistic end only in its ultimate ruin and creates a scenario in which the flaws and defects in the "white cube" are pre-eminent. As in much of Bonvicini's work, the physical labor of construction - at times overlooked in discussions of architecture and here represented by the raw, exposed, and ultimately vulnerable building materials - is played against the fetishized finished product. – Excerpt from the exhibition folder "Monica Bonvicini, Light me Black", Art Institute Chicago, 2009
*1965 in Venice, Italy | Living and working in Berlin, Germany
Dimensions variable
First exhibited at the 1998 Vienna Secession, Plastered is a now-iconic installation that the artist has since re-created 23 times. Bonvicini presents an entire gallery floor constructed out of panels of thin, unfinished plasterboard, placed atop sheets of polystyrene foam. An apparently random pattern of holes placed in the support layer, however, initiates the weakening and eventual cracking of the sheetrock under the weight of people moving through the space. Thus, the once clean, unspoiled flooring is progressively compromised and fragmented over the course of the exhibition, until only rubble remains. Literally built in order to be destroyed, Plastered achieves its artistic end only in its ultimate ruin and creates a scenario in which the flaws and defects in the "white cube" are pre-eminent. As in much of Bonvicini's work, the physical labor of construction - at times overlooked in discussions of architecture and here represented by the raw, exposed, and ultimately vulnerable building materials - is played against the fetishized finished product. – Excerpt from the exhibition folder "Monica Bonvicini, Light me Black", Art Institute Chicago, 2009
*1965 in Venice, Italy | Living and working in Berlin, Germany
Monica Bonvicini is an Italian artist. She lives and works in Berlin since 1986. In 2003, Bonvicini was appointed as the Professor of Sculpture and Performance at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. Starting in 2017, she is the new Professor of Sculpture at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In her work Bonvicini investigates the relationship between power structures, gender and space. Bonvicini works intermediately with installation, sculpture, video, photography and drawing mediums. She has installed permanent artworks at the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park in London, the harbour at the Oslo Opera House and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art. Bonvicini was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2012.
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This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.