SHANNON BOOL. Crimes of the Future

SHANNON BOOL. Crimes of the Future

04.09.2020 – 24.10.2020

What is a body to do with itself
in a space like this?
(Shannon Bool)

The title of the upcoming show "Crimes of the Future" and of the eponymous large-format tapestry cites the movie by David Cronenberg released in 1970. Shannon Bool focuses on architecture as a projection screen and choreographer of the actions and identity of the bodies of the protagonists that are at first “meaningless”. The architectural style of “brutalism” plays a central role. The term “brutalism” derives from the French “béton brut”, meaning “raw concrete”. Evolving in the 1920s as a modernist movement, brutalism aimed at providing the experience of “mental liberation”, “true seeing”, “sensuality instead of commerce”.

Opening during the dc-open weekend

Fri 04 Sep 11 am—10 pm
Sat 05 Sep 11 am—8 pm
Sun 06 Sep 11 am—6 pm

The motif of Shannon Bool’s tapestry "Crimes of the Future" was generated on the computer and is based on a photograph of a presentation at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris. Shannon Bool arranges the modernist-minimalist figurines, which themselves are already a surrogate of the female body, to a new projection screen by creating a collage on the “inside” of the silhouettes with detailed views of sacred architectures of brutalism, such as the Wotruba Church in Vienna or the Second Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner. The motif triggers a cascade of associations. The original figurines as “pure” projection screens were already compared to Madonnas of consumerism. This “nakedness of meaning” is now replaced by the nakedness of brutalism’s concrete architecture. The computer-generated motif is produced with the highly technologized Jacquard weaving method that translates digital space into a haptic relief. Shannon Bool’s tapestry thus gives rise to a paradoxical corporeal experience between digital and real space, which literally “collapse” in the mental space of the viewer.

Shannon Bool’s series of abstract “grid” and “waffle” paintings are based the architecture of different brutalist structures built in the 1960s, which were deconstructed on the computer. The compositions are “collaged” on the computer turning the functional architecture into an abstract pattern. Having cast off its “sacred transcendence” in this way, a tongue-in-cheek, savvy play with the “sacredness” of abstract art begins.
The grid structures are created as “blind painting.” The support is covered with wax and removed only after the painting process is over. It is semitransparent and conceals a mirror that subtly reflects the surroundings of the work. The actual space and body of the viewer become components of the work. Shannon Bool’s conceptual painting originates in a precise work process that simultaneously involves the “unforeseeableness” of abstract painting.

Born 1972 in Canada, Shannon Bool has been living in Germany since 2001. She is professor of Painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, Germany. Her works are part of renowned museum collections such as Kunstmuseum Bonn, Metropolitan Museum New York, LBBW Collection, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt, Collection of the Federal Estate of Germany, Lenbachhaus Munich or The National Gallery of Canada. Recent solo exhibitions have been at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Centre Culturel Canadien in Paris (both 2019), Mus.e Joliette Canada (2018). She has participated at internationally renowned group exhibitions such as „Germany is no Island“ at Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, „I am a Problem“ at Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt (2017), „Mentally Yellow“ at Kunstmuseum Bonn (2017), La Biennale de Montr.al (2017) and at „In the Picture: Overpainted Photography“ at Sprengel Museum Hannover (2019). In 2020 her next solo exhibition is at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada.