Approximately a month ago we went with the class to an

exhibition in Rotterdam in the Center for Contemporary

Art called Witte de With. A German artist Cosima von
Bonin was presenting her work in this center. It was
pretty obvious that she had her own style of making art.
It weren’t paintings or statues, she showed more or less
stuffed animals.

Cosima von Bonin.

The German artist Cosima von Bonin was born in 1962 in Mombasa,
Kenya. Cosima von Bonin is a mysterious women, you can’t find much
information about her on the internet so I think that she wants to stay
anonymous. This is obvious because I can’t find one picture of her on the
internet so I think that she stays out of the spot lights.

She is presenting her work in the Witte de With, Center for Contemporary
Art. The exhibition started on the 10th of October 2010 and will finish on
the 9th of January 2011. It’s a new art exhibition of laziness. Her work is
made from new and old art work pieces, you could see it as a type of pop-
art. Of oversized stuffed animals and cloth sewn together, to ironic
imitations of minimalist sculpture. Cosima von Bonin mix elements form
formalism and abstraction from the pop-art. She balanced her work with
humor and seriousness. The title of the art exhibition is from the Italian
expression ‘Dolce far niente’ which means ‘doing nothing’. On one hand
that sentence is correct because she doesn’t make all her art pieces
herself, some of the art pieces are made for her. Of course she came up
1.
with the idea but someone else made it for her and put it together. But
still her life isn’t about ‘doing nothing’ right now because she has a lot of
exhibitions in Europe, she needs to work hard for that. The exhibition in
Witte the With opens a whole new world to her in Europe.

Witte de With.

Witte de with was opened in 1990 as a center for contemporary art, to

introduce contemporary art in the Dutch culture in Rotterdam. The center
wanted to be a classic museum but also show modern art. Witte de With is
now a popular and well known museum, there is a local, national and
international network from people and other companies who support this
museum. Their challenge is to show the newest developments but to still
attract a large group of people.

The manger from Witte de With gets a contract from a maximum of six
years. Chris Dercon (1990 – 1995), Bartomeu Marí (1996 – 2001),
Catherina Davis (2002 – 2004) and Hans Maarten van den Brink (2004 –
2006). The new manager from Witte de With is Nicolaus Schafhausen he
started the first of January in 2006 as an artistic and business leader.

Exhibition.

There is a lot to see in the

exhibition from Cosima von
Bonin but her main art works
have stuffed animals in it. It
sounds pretty crazy, an art
exhibition of stuffed animals
and actually it is pretty
crazy. When you give a first
look to the stuffed animals
they look all cute and
touchable but you can’t
touch them of course
because it’s still a museum
piece. But when you look the
second time, you see that the Out of proportion stuffed animals.
animals are out of proportion.
One hand is bigger than the other, one foot is smaller than the other so
actually the stuffed animals are a bit scary. For me this isn’t art. I would
never hang her art works in my house because it’s nothing special and
somehow it kind of freaks me out. Especially the second stuffed animal
with his out of proportion arms, feet, eyes and tails. When I look to these
stuffed animals I think that even children could make this. They will just
draw their idea on paper and give it to some else to make it.
2.
In her exhibition there aren’t
only stuffed animals, she also
has some cheats sowed
together, what is done by her
seamstresses. On some
pieces of cloth there is
written something. The
pieces don’t looks finished at
all, you see threads hanging
but this was what she
wanted. So don’t think that
her seamstresses were too
lazy (what do match here
theme) to finish it. I really
don’t like this art work. Cloth sown together, with threads
The cloth choice is ugly hanging.
and I don’t like the
theme of this laziness and unfinished work. I do need to give her my
respect for her idea because her theme really comes out good in this piece
of art work. You could see that they where lazy because they didn’t
wanted to cut off the threads. But this doesn’t stop me from finding it
ugly.

This fence is also in her

exhibition. I don’t know why
she made this choice. I don’t
like it at all because I don’t
think that this fence belongs
to the theme laziness. When
I look to it, I just see a
normal fence. It did gave me
a weird feeling, a feeling that
I was very small, like a
midget and it looked like the
fence was blocking me from
going anywhere as if
someone was going to harm
me. If I look to this picture A claustrophobic fence.
I feel a bit claustrophobic.
3.

This work from Cosima von

Bonin I like the most. The
picture isn’t very clear but
the person who is sitting
there looks like Pinocchio, a
famous character who nearly
everybody knows. I like this
piece because I could find the
theme laziness back in it.
And because it still looks like
she put a lot of work in it
because it looks done. He is
sitting there for so long that
his nose has grown longer and longer into the wall. Lazy Pinocchio.
He is just too lazy to stand
up and do something else.

For who is it?

This exhibition isn’t for everybody, it attracts more

the artistic people who could find themselves in
this type of art and could make their own story
with it. That is also what I saw when we were
walking during the tour, well there weren’t a lot of
people but what I saw where people with an
alternative look. Who like to express themselves
with their clothing, like having a lot of tattoos and
wearing bright clothes or dark but they put their
emotion in their clothes. The same way how
Cosima von Bonin put het emotion of laziness in
her art work.

My opinion.

At first when we were in the subway I didn’t know exactly what we were
going to see. I wasn’t very excited because I expected something stupid,
something where our school the Einstein Lyceum would go to. Finally we
were inside and the people split us up into two groups and gave us a tour.
When I saw what was hanging in this exhibition, I tried to keep myself
awake and couldn’t wait to get home. I don’t know what I should think
about Cosima von Bonin. I can’t see her as a real artist because she
doesn’t make her thinks herself, she has special seamstresses who make
her ideas to reality. She wouldn’t be anywhere without her seamstresses.

4.
I think that her head also very chaotic because she show stuff that looks
unfinished and that could be a sign, that she can’t finish stuff and that she
wants to begin with a new art piece as soon as possible. I can’t
understand her very well and think that she has a different perspective to
the world than I have. I wouldn’t have chosen this exhibition myself to
make a report about but it was a different and eventually a pretty fun
experience in my life. I wouldn’t recommend this exhibition to most of the
people but I know some artistic persons who would like to go here and
would love it with whole their heart.
5.