FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Curated by Andrea Teschke
Opening reception: Friday, March 7, 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce KALT MODERN TEUER, a solo exhibition by Cologne-based artist Cosima von Bonin. This is her first solo show in New York since 1993. The opening reception is on March 7 from 6 to 9 p.m., and the exhibition will be on view through April 19, 2003.

Cosima von Bonin is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Germany in the last decade. She works in a variety of different mediums, producing sculptures, paintings, films, installations and performances. She often collaborates with her friends and fellow artists Kai Althoff, Josephine Pryde, Isa Genzken and others. Within this context she takes on numerous roles as producer, DJ, curator, and event planner.

The exhibition will feature a major new sculpture, a rocket titled "Riley."

The exhibition will also include quilts and soft fence sculptures. Inspired by artists such as Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo and Rosemarie Trockel who have incorporated craft in their work, von Bonin makes her objects in unconventional ways using fabrics with varied patterns. The quilts are stitched and collaged, seemingly random designs are a schema of the artist's personal signs and symbols. The fences are lithesome and feminine, like the quilts they exude a sense of spontaneity and calculated whimsy.

Von Bonin has recently exhibited her work at the Kunstverein Hamburg, the Neue Galerie in Graz, the Kunsthalle St. Gallen, and the Kunstverein Braunschweig.

In conjunction with the opening, Friedrich Petzel Gallery will screen three of von Bonin's films on Sunday, March 9 at 11:00 am. The films feature David Grubbs, a Brooklyn-based musician and writer whose latest recording "Rickets & Scurvy" was released by Drag City records last year. Grubbs will give a short introduction before the screening.

For further information, please contact the gallery at info@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.