In her space-consuming installations Cologne-based artist Cosima von Bonin combines familiar motifs, yet they oftentimes appear to have lost their common proportions. Alongside her “classic” giant mushrooms and large-scale fabric pictures, oversize animal objects and accessible architectural elements belong to the artist’s well-known aesthetic scenario. The materiality and formal vocabulary of von Bonin’s works result from references to fashion and music culture as well as to pop and art history. Her elaborately arranged and choreographed performances emerge form the collaboration of an illustrious company of befriended artists, critics and musicians.
For “Texte zur Kunst” von Bonin, whose contribu-tion to documenta 12 is eagerly awaited, has in miniature gone back to the motif of a skyrocket that already surfaced in her 2002 exhibition “Fondorientierte Ausstattung” in Graz in guise of a large-scale sculpture. By means of a radiant orange varnish applied to the head and airfoils of the unmanned flying object, she turns an item commonly associated with potency and threat into something playful – a “must have” for fans!