Kunstverein Nürnberg

CATHERINE BIOCCA
Bonsai Feeling
3 June - 6 August 2017

Under the title BONSAI FEELING at the Kunstverein Nürnberg, German-Italian artist Catherine Biocca (*1984, Rome; lives in Amsterdam and Berlin) presents her first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany.

Using the artificial form of the bonsai plant as a point of departure, Catherine Biocca addresses in the exhibition various meta-levels of perceiving reality and their possible intensification. In her digitally animated video clips, spatial installations and sculptures, she focuses on the reciprocal movements of facticity and manipulation, destruction and reconstruction, mishap and control. She is particularly interested in human communicative behaviour and its constellations, which she has explored through detailed observations of Internet culture, comics and cartoons as well as her research of art history. How society deals with violence – as explicit and implicit non-verbal acts – and our capacity for empathy often stand at the centre of her investigations. She examines turning points in humour and the psychological manifestations of “Schadenfreude”. Her works thereby reflect the process of identity formation as a constant balance between competition and compliance in relation to others.

Catherine Biocca (b. 1984 in Rome, Italy) lives in Amsterdam and Berlin. She studied political science in Rome before she changed at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Georg Herold, where she completed with a degree as master student in 2013. Shortly afterwards she was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam from 2014 to 2015.

Catherine Biocca has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, as e.g. in Meeting 1, on display, BASIS, Frankfurt a. Main; in Meeting 4D / Architecture of an Atom (with Juliacks), Silberkuppe, Berlin (2015); at The 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg (2015); at The 3rd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, Shenzhen (2016) and in Dejima. Concepts of In- and Exclusion, GAK Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2017). Furthermore she presented her works in solo exhibitions as The Fear of Killing / Fear of Being Killed at Le Foyer, Zurich (2016); Discreete Justice (with Charlotte Herzig) at PSM Gallery, Berlin (2016) as well as Judge Judy Judas at PIK – project space at the Kunstwerk, Cologne (curated by Carla Donauer) and currently SS / SAD SYMPHONY at Frutta Gallery, Rome (both 2017). Amongst her important awards is the STRABAG Artaward International 2015 and most recently the Hans Purrmann-Prize (Förderpreis) 2017. Since 2016 Catherine Biocca is running the project space JollyJoker in Amsterdam in collaboration with Lisa Reitmeier and Benedikt Hipp.