Structural Psychodrama #2

Structural Psychodrama #2 represents the second in a series of three works by the Italian artist Monica Bonvicini. Made in 2017 and first exhibited that year as part of her solo at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, entitled RE pleasure RUN, the work develops the artist’s primary concerns, summarised as “the relationship between architecture, power, gender, space, surveillance and control” through a temporary reconstruction of the gallery space. The work is made up of a number of constructed walls, each of which hovers a small distance from the gallery floor, supported by phallic Murano glass sculptures which rest beneath.

The work points to the power dynamics which govern the art world, and the world at large, combining a history of institutional critique with material conceptualism and a form of dry humour that is typical of the artist’s approach, in a way that highlights the fragility of these structures and hints at their immanent destruction. The theme of destruction, which is also integral to Bonvicini’s work, is developed both materially and conceptually in this sense. Her selection of Murano glass for the small-scale sculptures which support the walls of the work contains both a suggestion of insecurity, derived from the material’s breakable properties, and also an ironic tension which underlies the relation between the material’s history and Bonvicini’s chosen formation of it.

Indeed Structural Psychodrama #2 is a good example of how Bonvicini reinforces her ideas through her material choices. Her ongoing investigation of the social implications of architectural space here carries a visceral suggestion of potential collapse, the kind that might eventually redress the structures of power that she critiques. It is in this way that “the artist uses the walls of institutions and galleries to undermine the structural functionality of such places, while also prescribing them with an open possibility for an imaginary performance.”

— Elsa Gray