Witte the With

8/8/2019 Witte the With

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Approximately a month ago we went with the class to anexhibition in Rotterdam in the Center for ContemporaryArt called Witte de With. A German artist Cosima vonBonin was presenting her work in this center. It waspretty obvious that she had her own style of making art.It weren’t paintings or statues, she showed more or lessstuffed 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 muchinformation about her on the internet so I think that she wants to stayanonymous. This is obvious because I can’t find one picture of her on theinternet so I think that she stays out of the spot lights.

She is presenting her work in the Witte de With, Center for ContemporaryArt. The exhibition started on the 10th of October 2010 and will finish onthe 9th of January 2011. It’s a new art exhibition of laziness. Her work ismade 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 ironicimitations of minimalist sculpture. Cosima von Bonin mix elements formformalism and abstraction from the pop-art. She balanced her work withhumor and seriousness. The title of the art exhibition is from the Italianexpression ‘Dolce far niente’ which means ‘doing nothing’. On one handthat sentence is correct because she doesn’t make all her art piecesherself, some of the art pieces are made for her. Of course she came up

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with the idea but someone else made it for her and put it together. Butstill 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 inWitte 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, tointroduce contemporary art in the Dutch culture in Rotterdam. The centerwanted to be a classic museum but also show modern art. Witte de With isnow a popular and well known museum, there is a local, national andinternational network from people and other companies who support thismuseum. Their challenge is to show the newest developments but to stillattract a large group of people.

The manger from Witte de With gets a contract from a maximum of sixyears. 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 hestarted the first of January in 2006 as an artistic and business leader.

Exhibition.

There is a lot to see in theexhibition from Cosima von

Bonin but her main art workshave stuffed animals in it. Itsounds pretty crazy, an artexhibition of stuffed animalsand actually it is prettycrazy. When you give a firstlook to the stuffed animalsthey look all cute andtouchable but you can’ttouch them of course

because it’s still a museumpiece. But when you look thesecond 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 soactually the stuffed animals are a bit scary. For me this isn’t art. I wouldnever hang her art works in my house because it’s nothing special andsomehow it kind of freaks me out. Especially the second stuffed animalwith his out of proportion arms, feet, eyes and tails. When I look to thesestuffed 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’tonly stuffed animals, she alsohas some cheats sowedtogether, what is done by herseamstresses. On some

pieces of cloth there iswritten something. Thepieces don’t looks finished atall, you see threads hangingbut this was what shewanted. So don’t think thather seamstresses were toolazy (what do match heretheme) to finish it. I reallydon’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 myrespect for her idea because her theme really comes out good in this pieceof art work. You could see that they where lazy because they didn’twanted to cut off the threads. But this doesn’t stop me from finding itugly.

This fence is also in her

exhibition. I don’t know whyshe made this choice. I don’tlike it at all because I don’tthink that this fence belongsto the theme laziness. WhenI look to it, I just see anormal fence. It did gave mea weird feeling, a feeling thatI was very small, like amidget and it looked like the

fence was blocking me fromgoing anywhere as if someone was going to harmme. If I look to this picture A claustrophobic fence.I feel a bit claustrophobic.



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This work from Cosima vonBonin I like the most. Thepicture isn’t very clear but

the person who is sittingthere looks like Pinocchio, afamous character who nearlyeverybody knows. I like thispiece because I could find thetheme laziness back in it.And because it still looks likeshe put a lot of work in itbecause it looks done. He issitting there for so long that

his nose has grown longer and longer into the wall. Lazy Pinocchio.He is just too lazy to standup and do something else.

For who is it?

This exhibition isn’t for everybody, it attracts morethe artistic people who could find themselves inthis type of art and could make their own storywith 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 analternative look. Who like to express themselveswith their clothing, like having a lot of tattoos andwearing bright clothes or dark but they put theiremotion in their clothes. The same way howCosima von Bonin put het emotion of laziness inher art work.

My opinion.

At first when we were in the subway I didn’t know exactly what we weregoing to see. I wasn’t very excited because I expected something stupid,something where our school the Einstein Lyceum would go to. Finally wewere 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 thinkabout Cosima von Bonin. I can’t see her as a real artist because shedoesn’t make her thinks herself, she has special seamstresses who makeher ideas to reality. She wouldn’t be anywhere without her seamstresses.

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I think that her head also very chaotic because she show stuff that looksunfinished and that could be a sign, that she can’t finish stuff and that shewants to begin with a new art piece as soon as possible. I can’tunderstand her very well and think that she has a different perspective tothe 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 funexperience in my life. I wouldn’t recommend this exhibition to most of thepeople but I know some artistic persons who would like to go here andwould love it with whole their heart.



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Witte the With