From oversized stuffed animals to sewn paintings, from pastiches of minimalist sculptures to recreations of shop display systems, Cosima von Bonin’s work blends formalism and Pop, oscillating between seriousness and fun, weighed down with melancholy or fizzing with critical wit.
This book features new texts by her long-standing collaborator Dirk von Lowtzow and from the cult writer Mark von Schlegell, revealing the quirky world of references that inform von Bonin’s unusual practice. Accompanying an exhibition that takes sloth as one of its central themes, the book also reproduces an existing array of texts on laziness and sloth that were first published by Brooklyn-based Cabinet magazine.
The book will feature an extended introduction by curator Zoe Gray; a text by Nicolaus Schafhausen; an installment of a science fiction story by Mark von Schlegell; an interview between Cosima von Bonin and Daffy Duck scripted by Dirk von Lowtzow; a text by Mami Kataoka about animals, idlers and tricksters; photographs from the exhibition; and the re-print of Cabinet magazine’s Sloth Section from their Spring 2008 issue, featuring texts by Daniel Rosenberg, Christopher Turner, Laura Nahmias & Nicholas Nauman, Marina van Zuylen, William Justice, and an interview with Pierre Saint-Amand by Sina Najafi.