Monica Bonvicini: Both Ends

Monica Bonvicini’s work conducts a continual dialogue between bodies and architecture. Frequently, Bonvicini eroticizes and/or psychologizes this relationship, through sculptures, installations and video works in which people are seen plunging their bodies into walls as if passing through them, or rubbing their genitals on the corners of a wall. The props of sadomasochism are often invoked, in a mattress made of black leather belts and screen installations of hanging chains. Bonvicini’s humor is laced with a confrontational edge that compels her to explore, for example, the architectural-erotic politics of construction workers, who are disenfranchised from the authorship of their physical labor, but who are also notorious purveyors of male aggression towards women. If Bonvicini has a credo, it is best expressed by her oft-cited spraypainted wall text, “Architecture is the ultimate erotic act/carry it to excess.” Both Ends provides a survey of works spanning the past decade.