ROCKSTARS (CHARACTER APPROPRIATION) (ROLLENANEIGNUNG)

Cosima von Bonin

2003

Cosima von Bonin works with a wide variety of forms and materials, ranging from textile paintings to oversized plush toys, from electronic music to video, from performance to social relations. Her art may look playful, but she interweaves a complex and sometimes puzzling mix of connections that call into question a range of sociopolitical issues. In the center of Rockstars, one of von Bonin’s large-scale fabric works, is a circle alluding to the form of an album or compact disc; stitched onto this circle are fragmented outlines of two faces. The image recalls the cover of the 1975 eponymous “silver album” by the American pop stars Daryl Hall and John Oates. The gender-bending performance at play on the album cover and the note stitched down the left side of von Bonin’s canvas (“2 Sissie Boys from Heidelberg”) draw the viewer’s attention toward gay culture’s penchant for kitsch and camp and a 1990s sensibility of queer. Rockstars exemplifies von Bonin’s overall approach of both establishing and unsettling meaning by looping together different discursive fields, with each loop opening up new worlds by revisiting what seems all too familiar. [Permanent collection label, 2017]

Artist Cosima von Bonin (Austrian, b. Kenya, 1962)
Title ROCKSTARS (CHARACTER APPROPRIATION) (ROLLENANEIGNUNG)
Date 2003
Medium Wool, cotton, and loden
Dimensions unframed | 108 7/8 x 110 3/8 x 1 3/8 in.
Credit line University purchase, Parsons Fund, and with funds from Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg, by exchange, 2003
Object number WU 2003.0007

Technique sewing
Work type painting
textile art
Theme Comparative Arts
Consumerism and Commodity Culture

Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/03/2013 - 09/07/2013

Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/09/2011 - 01/09/2012

Cosima von Bonin
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/06/2011 - 08/15/2011

Cosima von Bonin: Roger and Out
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 09/16/2007 - 01/07/2008

Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 02/09/2007 - 04/29/2007

Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany 2007

Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation 2011

Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany 2011

Until May 8, 2003
[with Friedrich Petzel Gallery (1994–), New York]

May 8, 2003–
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, purchase from the above, Parsons Fund, and with funds from Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg, by exchange [1]

Notes:

[1]

WU 2003.0007 object file, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis.

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