Monica Bonvicini

Untitled (Chain swing), 2006

Chains (galvanized steel), chain snap closings (galvanized steel), translucent lights, glossy black floor paint
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist

Monica Bonvicini’s work is dominated by rough structures and a chaotic tangle of metallic verticals and horizontals. Massive chains, black leather, and freely suspended swings indicate, however, that this is a playground for adults, an exercise-equipment park for devotees of hard-core sex. The swings invite the viewer to make use of them. This invitation is ambiguous. Just like the art of Paul McCarthy or Mike Kelley, it makes reference to the area of sexual taboos, to the sado-masochistic scene, so to say to the darkroom of society, a space which Bonvicini here exposes to the glare of daylight. The nasty rattling of the chains, the dominance and density of the hanging metal through which the visitor must make his or her laborious way, summon up associations with prisons, with torture, from Abu Ghraib all the way to the barracks of Germany’s Federal Armed Forces. In particular, the chill light and the cell-like effect of the space itself enhance such associations. On the other hand, the swings are far too fine and elegant to be nothing more than a memorial or a pleasurable playground. The minimalism of the forms and colors—only a few lines, the undeviatingly uniform materials, everything in black and metallic– elevates the playground into a formal sculpture which ultimately, through its rough, construction-site charm—assigns a new interpretation to the museum space. The installation presents itself as a transitory locale—quite an appropriate metaphor for an exhibition which itself is just as temporary.
(Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, Berlin 2005)

Monica Bonvicini, *1965 born in Venice