How to write about Cosima von Bonin's work? Or, rather, how not to write about Cosima von Bonin's work?
I suspect that, first of all, I must not commit the misstep of asking what a lamppost standing upright inside an art gallery means. And, above all, under no circumstances, should I attempt to answer that glaringly inappropriate question.
Nor should I also refrain from writing anything about those stuffed dachshunds that so charmingly cross the gallery, or about those enormous bulldogs covered in leopard print?
Nothing.
For Cosima knows how to say nothing in her work.
But isn't saying nothing already saying too much in these times when artworks basically say and say and say?
Perhaps if I had the modesty to simply try to describe Cosima's work without falling into the traps of discourse and interpretation, I might be able to say something: to write, for example, that most of the artworks that make up The Ritz are made from fabrics of the most diverse origins, from Japanese fishing boat flags to luxurious Hermès towels, whose patterns, weaves, prints, and motifs function as strokes of a drawing foreign to their origin—for to say this is to say nothing.
But what a difference there is between not saying and not saying!
Cosima knows how not to say, just as that bison, drawn millennia ago on the walls of the cave, knows how not to say.
How not to write that entering The Ritz is like entering a cave painted by Paleolithic people thirty thousand years ago, but inside thirty thousand years from now, but now: insistent images of animals whose meaning has been lost over time and its catastrophes.
And yet, in their not saying, Cosima's works articulate a language through the power of repetition, rhythm, references, insistence, and silence. If instead of Spanish I knew how to speak Octopus, read Leopard, write in Whale, perhaps I would have managed to bark something, moo something, cackle something, purr something true about it.
How, then, to write about Cosima von Bonin's work. Or, rather, how not to write about Cosima von Bonin's work. How to say and not say those plastic affections that resist words like the love of a dog.
Luis Felipe Fabre
