Upstairs Downstairs comprises a selection of work produced by Cosima von Bonin over the last 35 years. Despite the international attention she has received, this is her first exhibition in London.
Von Bonin came to prominence in Cologne during the 1990s, amongst a group of artists who were purposefully detached from the city’s burgeoning art market and produced work with apparent reluctance, embedding it in forms of sociality, performance and events. Since then, von Bonin has become a prolific producer of objects that are languorous, humorous and somewhat melancholic.
The exhibition includes some of the artist’s early works, unseen for more than a decade, which describe the world as a stage or allude to liberation and escape. Predominant in Upstairs Downstairs are objects and characters that have their origins in cartoons and the imaginative repertoire of childhood. With these more recent works, von Bonin draws viewers playfully into questions about feelings and desires.
Cosima von Bonin (b.1962, Mombasa, Kenya) lives in Cologne. She has exhibited widely for the past three decades. Her most recent exhibitions include Songs for Gay Dogs, Mudam, Luxembourg (2024) and Feelings, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2024). In the UK, she has exhibited at Glasgow International, with Who’s Exploiting Who in the Deep Sea (2017) and Loop #02 of the Lazy Susan Series, at the Arnolfini, Bristol (2011). Other significant exhibitions include Roger & Out, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2006); The Fatigue Empire, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010) and Hippies Use Side Door, mumok, Vienna (2014).
