She writes longingly about transformation, the intangible thing that ‘makes a picture alive and not dead’.
She laments ‘no transformation… I may as well admit it, I’m blocked’...
a powerful nostalgia for the ethos of transformation and accident
the ‘stilt coupled with bloat’
remarkable constellations is no accident. It is the result of accretion.
BB: This idea of successful object when it results from a transformation, evokes or suggests one, is also very familiar to me, and cherished
–From a shared document of quotes and reflections by Beatrice Bonino, and others.
Cosetta takes the form of a solo presentation by Beatrice Bonino. The works are an excellent hint to reflect on the concept of intrinsic value, meant as rarity, monetary value, preciousness; we are used to considering as precious material something which is difficult to find, and highly requested by the market, but in this case we are faced to an atypical case. The artist's selection criteria, however personal, cannot be likened to the shared concept of preciousness; it generates a new aesthetic category. The materials chosen from so many seemingly similar ones, now look the rarest to us. The element of arbitrariness, acting through inscrutable principles of choice, becomes a foundational quality of composition, that sheet of paper among a hundred, that plastic among a thousand. Pieces that might appear to be born as addition are, in our opinion, born by subtraction, the more precise the appropriation, the greater the mass of the unchosen. Once we have the measure of the care of every choice, we can understand how equally accurate the composition. Preserving the identity characteristics of inanimate objects is no simple matter; it seems to us that a fruitful form of collaboration has been established between the artist and her things. You should seize the opportunity.
–MMXX
The first iteration of Beatrice Bonino’s Cosetta was first presented at MMXX, Milan, an artist-run space located in Milan, founded by Emanuele Marcuccio and Daniele Milvio in 2020. MMXX facilitates exhibitions and promotes critical discourse.
Beatrice Bonino’s (*1992, Turin) work often takes containers like a found box, a ceramic vessel, or in looser terms, domestic space, as a starting point for her subtle play with texture, conditions of visibility and material connotations. The Paris-based artist holds a PhD in Sanskrit, and while her academic experience is distinct from her most recent sculptural practice, nearly fifteen years of studying ancient languages seems to imbue her work with a sense of piecing together forgotten modes of communication.
