Monica Bonvicini - Contemporary Art Evening London Thursday, February 11, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan

  • Exhibited

    Milan, Galleria Emi Fontana, Monica Bonvicini: Blind Shot, 27 September 2004 – 10 February 2005; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Italian Mentalscapes: A Journey through Italian Contemporary Art, 19 July – 6 October 2007

  • Catalogue Essay

    Monica Bonvicini’s eclectic oeuvre deals with the idea of the fetish. The fetish, considered both as a sign of the alienation of the worker from the product of his work and the substitution of the eroticized body with an object equivalent, is fundamental to the principal relationships that exist in Western society and basic to much of the collective imagination. Bonvicini has delved into many aspects of this imagination, particularly the ideological covers that legitimize dynamics and the antithesis between man and woman. The present lot comprises a power tool tightly covered up in black leather and hung in a cage made out of metal grids. The power tool, whose inherent function is to build up or build down architecture, is rendered useless and reduced to an anthropomorphic object. It is displayed in a vitrine like a timeless fetishistic object.
     
    Dealing with the construction of sexual identity through the system of architecture has been the topic of Bonvicini’s work, which is always connected to the framework of space, gender and power. This work which addresses the issue of fetishism is a milestone in the development of her artistic discourse. One of the most interesting aspects in Bonvicini’s work is her formal exploration of sculpture and its environmental display. Her critique of minimalism focuses on the incorporation of its forms in the bourgeois aesthetic of everyday structures. Through a reflection on gender issues, often reinforced by biting humour, her work addresses the issues of ‘building,’ both architecturally and socially.

40

Caged tool #2 (stone saw)

2004
Metal grids, power tools, black leather, black leather belts, brick base.
Overall: 240 × 100 × 100 cm (94 1/2 × 39 1/2 × 39 1/2 in).

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 ‡♠

Sold for £31,250

Contemporary Art Evening

12 Feb 2010
London