Happiness is no Readymade

Happy art advisors floating down the Rhine with your belongings in tethered ziploc bags trailing behind season to all who celebrate.

a shaggy haired and mustachioed art gallerist is reflected a couple of times in a pale aqua multilayer, mirror, lacquer, and polished aluminum artwork by monica bonvicini that reads happiness is no readymade in atypically spaced and kerned text, part of the offering at art basel 2026 by tanya bonakdar gallery
Monica Bonvicini, Happiness, 2026, 2 Components lacquer, mirror, aluminum, 150 x 100 cm, via Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Meanwhile, I’m just staring in dazzled awe at the shimmering totality of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery’s Art Basel booth this year.

Among the glassy highlights: one of Monica Bonvicini’s mirror text works that simultaneously seduce with your own tinted reflection in a catchy text—Happiness is no Readymade—and unsettle with kerning-induced anxiety.

a 14.6 meter square panel of mirror polished aluminum with the cropped text, i do you in giant black letters leans against and towers over the modernist glass box on a stepped plinth of mies van der rohe's neue nationalgalerie in berlin, for monica bonvicini's 2022 show. photo, like every other art world photo in berlin, by jens ziehe
installation view, Monica Bonvicini, I do you, 2022, black foil on alucobond, aluminum trusses, 14.6 x 14.6 m, at the Neue Nationalgalerie, photo: Jens Ziehe via monicabonvicini.net

Bonvicini started the series in 2022, the same time she had an amazing show at the Neue Nationalegalerie in Berlin, I do you, that was fronted by a similarly tensely composed and cropped text on a mirror-finish aluminum panel.

Fun fact: in addition to the rubble and original glass from the just-completed renovation of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Bonvicini’s upper floor installation also included a structural sign element reading DESIRE, which in 2025 became a tattoo edition available through worksonskin.

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Art Basel 2026 Online Viewing Room [tanyabonakdargallery]

Previously, related, Bonvicini meets Bonnefous: Felix Gonzalez-Torres Tattoo: Origins