MONICA BONVICINI 

presentation on the occasion of the award ceremony for the Oskar-Kokoschka-prize 2020 

opening: February 20, 2020, 7pm 

duration: February 21 – 28. February 28, 2020   

Monica Bonvicini, born in Venice in 1965, studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin and the California Institute of Arts in Valencia. 

From 1998 to 2002 she lived in Los Angeles, where she taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. From 2003 to 2017 she was professor for performative art and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. 

Monica Bonvicini has been a professor for sculpture at the University of the Arts in Berlin since 2017. In her multifarious practice, Monica Bonvicini examines political, social and institutional circumstances and their effects on society and art production. In doing so, she focuses on the relationship between architecture, gender roles, control mechanisms and power structures. 

On February 28, Monica Bonvicini will be awarded the Oskar-Kokoschka-Prize, a state award from the Austrian federal government for outstanding achievements in the field of fine arts. This exhibition on the occasion of the award shows an overview of works from the past 25 years. 

Among other works there will be parts from the Smart Quotation 1995/96 series, the installation Flagging Down Up All Night 2019 and and the work Prozac, which relates to the chain reaction-like effects of antidepressants. 

For Flagging Down Up All Night, Monica Bonvicini uses black leather belts, which refer to the cultural symbolism of discipline, power and male dominance. The belts enclose a steel cylinder in the form of a braided sheathing. In some places this structure opens up in the form of a kind of cascade of leather parts and reveals the bare cylinder. The title of the work is a quote from Bob Dylan's It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry from 1965.   

Her work has been shown at numerous well-known biennials: Berlin (1998, 2004, 2014), La TriennaIe Paris (2012), Istanbul (2003, 2017), Gwangju (2006), New Orleans (2008) and Venice (1999, 2001, 2005 , 2011 and 2015 where she was awarded the Golden Lion in 1999). 

This year Monica Bonvicini will be represented at the Busan-Biennale. 

Most recently, Monica Bonvicini exhibited in the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (2011), in the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malága, (2011), in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2012), in the Kunsthalle Mainz (2013), in the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art (2016), the Berlinische Galerie (2017) and the exhibition at Belvedere 21, Vienna and at OGR Torino (2019). 

Her work Pas de Deux, 2020 can be seen in the exhibition The Cindy Sherman Effect at Bank Austria Kunstforum until June 21, 2020.