Dora Budor at Bonner Kunstverein

Preludes by Camilla Wills, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Henrik Olesen, and Yvo Cho

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“I was lost, it was already dusk, I had been driving for hours and was practically out of petrol.”

—Ice, Anna Kavan, 1967

Dora Budor’s exhibition takes dissociation as its mode of perception, where the loss of ground becomes a cumulative, shape-giving force. At Bonner Kunstverein, Budor negotiates Haus-Rucker-Co’s mid 1980s conversion of a flower market into a contemporary art center as it exists today. Rather than filling its singular hall, she moves through the architecture, drawing form from the psychic energies of social and economic life. Sculpture, video, sound, installation, and the work of other artists strategically engage the supposedly non-hierarchical exhibition system, and the freedom it seeks to stage.

The exhibition is accompanied by an essay written by Eleanor Ivory Weber and is structured through a prelude of moving image works by Camilla Wills, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Henrik Olesen, and Yvo Cho. Installed in the spaces that precede or surround the exhibition, these works speak on the limits and failures of language, social structures, morals, and value.

The show is curated by Viktor Neumann. The graphic design is conceived in collaboration with Sean Yendrys and Björn Giesecke. The exhibition is generously supported by Kunststiftung NRW, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rine-Westphalia, the Kemmler Foundation, Art Explora (as part of the Art Explora – Cité internationale des arts residency programme), and Galerie Molitor.

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Dora Budor (b. 1984, Croatia) is a New York-based artist and writer. Working with a wide range of media—including video, sculpture, installation, and sound—Budor’s exhibitions are developed in response to spatial and psychosocial conditions. Her recent solo exhibitions include Neuer Berliner Kunstverein / n.b.k. (2026), Nottingham Contemporary (2024), De Ateliers (2024), Galerie Molitor (2023), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2022), GAMeC Bergamo (2022), Progetto (2021), and Kunsthalle Basel (2019).

Budor’s work has been featured in major international exhibitions, most recently the Whitney Biennial (2024), the 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024), and the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). Budor was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019 and Pollock- Krasner Foundation Grant in 2018 and 2026. Her recently published books include Autoreduction, Continent, and By the Highway (with Ser Serpas and Rafik Greiss). Since 2025, she has been a professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.