Monica Bonvicini
It is Night Outside

2 MAY until 7 JUN 2025
Opening – 2 MAY, 6-9 pm

Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce Monica Bonvicini’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, It is Night Outside, opening May 1, 2025, as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin.

The enigmatic title of the exhibition is taken from Bonvicini’s new two-channel video installation, on view in the gallery’s lower exhibition space.

Drawing inspiration from canonical films like Antonioni’s Deserto Rosso or Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, as well as the work of Chantal Akerman, Bonvicini’s video relates to female autonomy and the performativity of the mundane through depictions of daily unconscious movement. Three performers navigate an undefined, ambiguous space, rearranging furniture, attempting to connect to this enclosed interior, which could be both intimate or disciplinary – an apartment, or an institution. We are offered brief glimpses through the windows, making it clear that the scenes are played out at night. Hence, the title also highlights an inherent ambiguity within Bonvicini’s work. She emphasizes the fact that it is hard to define one’s relation to their surroundings in alienating darkness.

A set of free standing sculptures occupy the main exhibition space. Black, monolithic cylinders with powdercoated steel structures appear striking and oppressive, covered in a relief of interwoven black leather belts. The use of material, namely leather, emphasizes connotations of discipline, power and masculine dominance. They are coupled with the invasive audio of the video from below. The muffled sounds of furniture being pushed, pulled and hitting the floor often seem violent, emphasizing the ambiguity of the situation Bonvicini has constructed within the gallery space.

A new set of sculptural works, delicate and intimate glass facsimiles of classical English hat and cloth hooks, are reminiscent of furnishings found in public spaces, like garderobes, changing rooms, or foyers where one would be invited to leave their belongings. Molded, cold-worked, and acid-treated for a translucent, almost ethereal materiality, these hooks line the gallery wall. Yet instead of coats or hats, they hold different types of feminine underwear. Bonvicini’s works question how intimacy is staged, performed and preserved.

From alienation to intimate psychological depth, Monica Bonvicini examines the relationship between women and the environments they inhabit. She challenges the static nature of objects and their contexts, revealing a quiet but profound struggle for agency and transformation.