Jonathan Binet
Raphaela Vogel: Raphaela und der grosse Kunstverein
6 June–9 August 2015
Opening: 5 June, 19h
Bonner Kunstverein
Hochstadenring 22
53119 Bonn
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm,
Thursday 11am–7pm
We are pleased to announce the presentation of the first solo show in Germany by French artist Jonathan Binet, as well as the first major solo exhibition by German artist Raphaela Vogel: Raphaela und der große Kunstverein.
Jonathan Binet
In his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, the French artist Jonathan Binet (b. 1984, St. Priest, France, lives and works in Paris) shows a series of new works that have been specially designed for the rooms of the Bonner Kunstverein.
Binet’s work focuses on painting. In the tradition of the “shaped canvas” (epitomized by Frank Stella’s work of the 1960s), his canvases can take varying forms. Covered with one or more monochrome fabrics, they are sparingly painted: lines, circles or simple signs sprayed, drawn or brushed in a single gesture. Similar to a body’s skeleton and skin, the stretcher determines the shape of the canvas while the material applied to the stretcher dictates the qualities of its encasement. Of particular interest in Binet’s work is his perception of the painting as an “integrative object.” This process of integration—the inclusion into a larger whole—occurs during the work’s installation; Binet actively considers the walls and conditions of the surrounding exhibition space, initiating a working process based on its specifics. Everything taking place within the space shapes the exhibition. A canvas can bend and be embedded in a stair railing. A continuous line spray-painted over the surface of a wall and onto a canvas extends a painting into space. With this direct and equal treatment of both painting and place, the work becomes inseparable from its surroundings, existing only in this very moment and in its specific spatial arrangement.
Beyond this exploration of the work’s adaption to space, Binet’s new series of paintings conceived for the Bonner Kunstverein is based on similarly shaped canvases, using the principle of repetition in order to create a visual game of echoing, disorientation and shifting reality. In doing so, he undertakes an investigation that one could relate to the linguistic reflections of Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008) in his novel La reprise (Repetition, 2001). There, the author distinguishes the concept of repetition from the idea of reprisal (répetition and reprise): is an exact repetition at all possible?
Jonathan Binet has exhibited his work in Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2015), Centre d’Art Neuchâtel (2014), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012), and at the CAPC in Bordeaux (2012).
Raphaela Vogel: Raphaela und der grosse Kunstverein
Raphaela Vogel (b. 1988 in Nuremberg, lives and works in Amsterdam) finished her studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt a. M. in 2014. The invitation by the Kunstverein constitutes her first major solo exhibition. Her work is located in the meeting of sculpture, video installation and performance and is characterized by an acute study of the relationship of the body to space, closely linked with her utilization of digital technologies (often including, for example: projectors, scanners, action cameras, and drones). The videos, which play a central role in her work, consist of filmed actions (mostly featuring Vogel herself), documentations of her own installations and collages from her archive of images. These videos then become part of her sculptural constructions where dimensional space, decor and the corporeal merge into an organically woven structure. She treats the projectors and the other technical equipment as active protagonists: for example, by removing their casings or by suspending them in unexpected ways, thus revealing their fragility and somatic character. Ultimately, she creates a hybrid form in which her relationship to space, object, technology and machine is displayed in a dynamic field of motion, from the process of its development to the self-reflective treatment of her own work.
For her exhibition at the Bonner Kunstverein, Raphaela Vogel has created a new video installation that expands into the exhibition space like the skeleton of a dinosaur. Into a structure of metal rods she has placed canvases crafted from an array of materials. Projected videos combine rhythmic sequences of recent and older recordings, resulting in a non-linear narrative in which the viewer moves back and forth through time and space. Other works deal with the exploration of hybrid forms between animal, human and machine, letting us plunge in the exhibition Raphaela und der grosse Kunstverein like in a futuristic fairy tale.
Raphaela Vogel has exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Kunstverein Wiesbaden, MMK, Frankfurt, and Neues Museum Nürnberg. She was awarded the DeAteliers grant, Amsterdam 2014.
The exhibitions are sponsored by: Kunststiftung NRW and Stiftung Kunst der Sparkasse in Bonn.
The exhibition Jonathan Binet is supported by the Bureau des arts plastiques / Institut français and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.
