For her exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz, the American artist Bunny Rogers conceived expansive installations across all four floors of the Kunsthaus. A memorial mound bathed in blue light awaits the visitor on the ground floor (Memorial, 2020); on the first floor, the one is invited to walk across a littered lawn, inspect a pile of garbage bags placed on it and admire a poster of Andy Gibb on the concrete wall (Trash Mound, 2020); Dyed roses embedded in cement bricks and fences with ribbons are the elements of the installation on the third floor (Cement Garden, 2020); for the fourth floor, Bunny Rogers created a space with tiled walls and dripping showers (Locker Room, 2020).
“A central subject in her work are the deliberations in the aftermath of the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, USA, in which fifteen people were murdered, including twelve students, one teacher, and the two perpetrators. Bunny Rogers choreographs spaces evoking the school but which become atmospheric tableaus, transforming KUB into a unique site that is not merely theatrical, but also a critical and political one interrogating the present.” (excerpt from the exhibition text).
Bunny Rogers: Kind Kingdom / Kunsthaus Bregenz. Bregenz (Austria), February 4, 2020.
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Exhibition text:
For its first exhibition in 2020 Kunsthaus Bregenz is presenting the American artist Bunny Rogers. The unadorned concrete of Peter Zumthor’s renowned building provides an ideal setting for Roger’s work, since she not infrequently invites her viewers into Stygian-like mise-en-scènes. The mood of her work is somber and doleful. Her installations, which generally incorporate music and poetry, are inspired by figures from the Internet, television series, and video games. The symbolism of the world of consumer goods and the entertainment industry, customarily presented as one that is both safe and profit-oriented, is inverted, becoming equivocal, profound, and melancholic. Rogers plays with identities in making series of portraits of herself that are ultimately 3D models of television characters. She does not present herself as a winner in such works, but rather as vulnerable, capable of suffering, and abandoned.
Bunny Rogers is planning expansive installations across all four floors of Kunsthaus Bregenz, the various scenarios and prevailing atmosphere being inspired by American funerals. A lawn is being laid in one space, a shower sprinkling water from the ceiling, the whole recalling shower rooms in an American school. Elsewhere visitors encounter roses cast in concrete. Soil, rubbish, and withered flowers become metaphors for the poetic and painful, beauty and transience – an art that does not shy away from the eerie, reminding each of us of our own responsibilities. It is a memorial, “objective art is impossible,” according to Bunny Rogers.
A central subject in her work are the deliberations in the aftermath of the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, USA, in which fifteen people were murdered, including twelve students, one teacher, and the two perpetrators. Bunny Rogers choreographs spaces evoking the school but which become atmospheric tableaus, transforming KUB into a unique site that is not merely theatrical, but also a critical and political one interrogating the present.
Biography
Bunny Rogers Bunny Rogers (born 1990 in Houston, Texas, USA) graduated in 2012 from Parsons School of Design in New York with a BA in visual arts. In 2017 she completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Bunny Rogers produces sculptures, installations, videos, and photographs. She has also become known for her poetry, which she presents online and at readings. She has exhibited, amongst others, at Hamburger Bahnhof, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, as well as being part of Ulrich Obrist’s project 89plus. Rogers lives and works in New York.
