At Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Cosima von Bonin presents an exhibition around the notion of sloth and fatigue. With her typical laconic humor, von Bonin creates a constellation of new and existing works. From oversized stuffed animals to sewn fabrics, from pastiches of minimalist sculptures to recreations of shop display systems, her work blends formalism and pop, oscillating between seriousness and fun, weighed down with melancholy or fizzing with critical wit.
The expression dolce far niente evokes the sweetness of doing nothing. Here the expression takes on a certain irony, as this is the first show in a sequence of major institutional exhibitions, which means that the artist is doing quite the opposite of nothing. The sequence is subtitled: THE LAZY SUSAN SERIES, A ROTATING EXHIBITION, referring to the rotating disks that appear in many restaurants and are used to present an array of dishes. The idea of a rotating exhibition differs from a traditional traveling show in that, with each rotation or loop, visitors are served a slightly different dish.