In Shannon Bool’s works the body becomes the central “area of the images.” The underlying sensibility of Bool’s work stems from collage, which allows the artist to explore the historic charge of the images she appropriates by recontextualizing them into unfurling constellations of associations that continuously move between what is actual and what is virtual. Her interest is based on the concept of the “Lived Body,” a term coined by the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty contending that external reality and subjective identity are the reciprocal result of bodily experience and action in space. A crucial role in this regard is played by the adaptation of history and the production techniques of the most various cultural spheres, ranging from the corporeal processes of sculpture, painting, and photography all the way to the generation of synthetic, digital image worlds.
Born 1972, Bool has been living in Germany since 2001. She is professor of Painting at Academy of Fine Arts (Mainz, Germany). Her works are part of renowned museum collections such as Kunstmuseum Bonn, Metropolitan Museum New York, LBBW Collection, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Collection of the Federal Estate of Germany, Lenbachhaus Munich or The National Gallery of Canada. Recent solo exhibitions have been at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (2020), The Kunstverein Braunschweig (2019), Centre Culturel Canadien (Paris, 2019), Musée Joliette Canada (2018). She has participated at internationally renowned group exhibitions such as I am a Problem at Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt (2017), Mentally Yellow at Kunstmuseum Bonn (2017), La Biennale de Montréal, Material Tells, Oakville Galleries (Oakville), and In the Picture: Overpainted Photography, Sprengel Museum (Hannover, 2019), and Musterung, Pop and Politik in der zeitgenössischen Textilkunst at Kunstsammlung Chemnitz (2020).
