RUNO LAGOMARSINO
OtherWhere
29.10 - 17.12. 2011
OtherWhere, the title of Runo Lagomarsino's exhibition, is a starting point, an indication of the narration and visual approach that the exhibition displays and formulates. It carries issues related to travel, placement/ displacement and the constructions of spaces; being it the gallery, a nation or the cracks on a Modernist building.
In the centre of the gallery six tables display several postcards of national commercial airlines. The depicted airplanes are from different parts of the world and time periods. There are postcards from companies that for one reason or another have ceased to operate, including those from countries that don't exist anymore or have changed their name. On each of the postcards there is a line of pebbles placed side by side. As the original airplanes once did or still do and as the postcards were designed to do, the stones have also been travelling, in a conjunction of a metaphoric travelling and an actual one. The stones have been collected in different locations, during walks taken by the artist or by friends and colleagues who contributed to the collection, building a collective narrative of places and people.
The artist has meticulously positioned the stones to cover the aircrafts' windows. All the windows are covered, not letting the passengers look out or the viewers look in. It is the stones that hold the airplane on the table, forcing each of them to stay, preventing them to fly. There is a visual paradox between the physicality of the stones and the postcards, and the nature of the aircrafts they represent.
"If you hold a stone, hold it in your hand. If you feel the weight, you'll never be late. To understand."
(Caetano Veloso)
Thin papers are hanged throughout one of the gallery walls, from the beams to the floor. Looking closer one can see that it's actually a measuring device, somehow quantifying the gallery space; or the viewers. At the same time, being a very light and fragile material, with its imperfections and instability, it point towards the impossibility of any unchanging and uniform measuring mechanism. It exposes itself as an arbitrary, imaginary construction.
On another way of rethinking mechanisms of generalization and constructions of space and geography, the artist occupies another wall with a small sculptured text. A sentence built with hand-scaled MDF letters currently sold in craft shops reads: RUNO IS NOT A NATION. The artist' name in this enunciation balances personal narratives with those assumed in universalizing discourses. This exemplifies the ways in which Lagomarsino has developed a distinct and subtle aesthetic in which image and text articulate a political discourse through poetic gestures.
The second room of the gallery, the work ContraTiempos uses the Parque Ibirapuera, in São Paulo, as its starting point. Designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, the park was inaugurated in 1954 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. A slide projection loop records the artist's search for images of the South-American map in the cracks of the paved path that unites the different buildings in the park. There is an element of performativity as the artist walks along the 28.000 square meters marquise, seeking the aged concrete for fissures that resemble his idea and memory of this territory's outline.
Not only in this walk through the park and in the collection of pebbles, but also in previous works, such us Trans Atlantic and Horizon (Southern Sun Drawing), the performative aspect is becoming more and more central. This component is not directly on display, but it is crucial in the process and it inhabits the narration of the work.
Runo Lagomarsino (born in Lund, 1977; lives and works in Malmö and São Paulo) participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York 2007-8 and received an MFA from the Malmö Art Academy in 2003. Recent Soloshows include Violent Corners ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano; Trans Atlantic Art Statements, Basel; There is always a day away, Galeria Luisa Strina (Espaço projeto), São Paulo (in 2011). Recent group exhibitions include Speech Matters Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), Istanbul and The Crisis of Confidence Prague Biennale 5, Prague (in 2011). The Moderna Exhibition 2010, Moderna Museet, Stockholm;The Travelling Show, Colección Jumex, Mexico City; All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Social at the Berardo Collection, Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon (in 2010) Report on Probability Kunsthalle Basel; Free as Air and Water, 41 Cooper Gallery, New York; Panorama da Arte Brasiliera, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paolo; OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding, Parsons the New School for Design, New York (in 2009) .
Nils Staerk
1760 Copenhagen, Denmark
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