Cosima von Bonin: Who’s Exploiting Who in the Deep Sea? / Aki Sasamoto: Delicate Cycle

SculptureCenter is pleased to announce two solo exhibitions, on view through January 2, 2017.

Cosima von Bonin: Who’s Exploiting Who in the Deep Sea?

Cosima von Bonin’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City examines the German artist’s fascination with the sea. Commonly evoked in her works, but rarely made explicit, the ocean is an organizing thematic for this show that focuses on a selection of her sculptures from 2000 onwards. Von Bonin was born in 1962 in Mombasa, Kenya, and lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Two opposing sides of the sea—a mysterious underworld with its beaches populated by sun-seeking vacationers—operate as metaphors in much of von Bonin’s work. Manifested through sculptures of creatures like crabs and sharks, as well as large bikinis and lifeguard stands, the exhibition investigates this conceptual thread.

Von Bonin’s cast of textile characters included in the exhibition present a host of contradictions—approachable creatures that aren’t quite what they seem or don’t behave as we might expect. Weaving together humor with melancholy, softness with hardness, access and exclusion, von Bonin’s sculptures mix with art history, popular culture, music, and craft, while engaging in feminist destabilizations. Appropriately, the deep sea—where von Bonin’s crew ventures—is its own world, little known and remote for us. 

The exhibition is co-curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib and Glasgow International Director Sarah McCrory and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication. 

German author and critic Diedrich Diederichsen will present a lecture on von Bonin’s work at SculptureCenter on October 26.

The exhibition will travel to the Oakville Galleries in Ontario, Canada in March 2017. 

Aki Sasamoto: Delicate Cycle

SculptureCenter is pleased to present Aki Sasamoto’s first solo exhibition in a US museum. For her exhibition in SculptureCenter’s lower level galleries, Sasamoto has created a new body of work in relation to the site. Sasamoto was born in 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan, and lives and works in New York.

Featuring new sculptural units that roll through the space, once activated by Sasamoto these units become rotating sites that explore neuroses around cleanliness and filth. Rotation reappears in an installation of washing and drying machines modified and periodically used by the artist in her performances. The exhibition also includes a new video and other sculptures that touch on “base” elements and repression. 

A cycle of performances articulating the stream of consciousness and associations between the various elements—such as the washing machines, bed sheets, and mobile units—that Sasamoto has incorporated in her sculptures is scheduled throughout the exhibition. 

The exhibition is curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with texts by Katrib and Jody Graf, a New York-based writer and curator, with a contribution by Sasamoto. 
 

About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists. SculptureCenter has provided thousands of artists the opportunity to create and exhibit new work and introduced New York audiences to hundreds of emerging artists as well as established artists from all over the world.

Cosima von Bonin: Who’s Exploiting Who in the Deep Sea? is organized by Glasgow International and SculptureCenter, New York.

SculptureCenter’s exhibition program is presented with generous support by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the Kraus Family Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the A. Woodner Fund; Petzel Gallery, New York; Jeanne Donovan Fisher; and contributions from our Board of Trustees, Director’s Circle, and the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation. 

Additional support for SculptureCenter’s presentation of Cosima von Bonin: Who’s Exploiting Who in the Deep Sea? is provided by Eleanor Cayre and the Marieluise Hessel Revocable Trust.

Additional support for Aki Sasamoto: Delicate Cycle is provided by The Japan Foundation, New York.