OTHER WHERE

source: runolagomarsino
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 travel, displacement 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. Planes belonging to nations, stones belonging to places, people in between placement and displacement, transcending notions of national belonging by the act of collecting stones everywhere.
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source: guggenheimorg
Runo Lagomarsino was born in 1977 in Lund, Sweden. He received a BFA from the Göteborgs Universitet Akademin Valand in 2001, and an MFA from the Konsthögskolan i Malmö, Sweden, in 2003. He subsequently participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York (2007–08). Born in Scandinavia to Argentinian parents descended from Italian émigrés who fled Europe during the First World War, Lagomarsino’s biography charts the very colonial histories that his work examines. Committed to striking a balance between strident political argument and carefully considered formal composition, he examines how the overlapping histories of Spain’s conquest of the New World and the modernist ideal of progress can be linked to contemporary events.

Keenly aware of the conceptual implications of a range of materials and medium, Lagomarsino moves seamlessly between collage, drawing, installation, performance, and video. Arranged as an exhibition of smaller related works, his installation Las Casas is Not a Home (2009–10) explores displacement, geopolitics, and power, using newspaper clippings and slide projections. The work’s title includes a reference to Spanish philosopher and 16th-century critic of slavery and colonialism Bartholomé de Las Casas It also incorporates a play on the Spanish word for home (casa), an idea that the artist returns to in his attempt to loosen the established connection between identity and place. An earlier work titled Geometry of Hope (2007) simply displays the typewritten phrase, “If you don’t know what the south is / It’s simply because you are from the north,” reminding readers to consider the personal and cultural lenses through which they inevitably view the world.

Lagomarsino has had solo exhibitions at Galeria Luisa Strina, So Paulo (2011); Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2012); and Nils Staerk, Copenhagen (2013) and Mendes Wood DM, So Paulo (both 2013). He has been featured in the group exhibitions I Want to be Able to See What It Is, Lunds Kunsthall, Sweden (2007); Changing Light Bulbs in Thin Air, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; and This is Not America, El Descanso del Guerrero, San Juan, Puerto Rico (both 2009); Vectors of the Possible, Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht; and The Moderna Exhibition, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (both 2010); The Way of the Worlds, Regional Contemporary Art Fund of Lorraine, Metz, France (2012); and The Crisis of Confidence, Galeria Victoria Art Center, Bucharest (2013). He also participated in the Guangzhou Triennial and Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (both 2008); Venice Biennale; Istanbul Biennial; and Prague Biennial (2011); and São Paulo Biennial (2012). Lagomarsino lives and works in Malmö, Sweden, and São Paulo.
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source: pipaprize
Runo Lagomarsino has participated in numerous exhibitions, including “Spaces of Action”, Palácio Sinel de Cordes, Lisbon, Portugal (2013); “X-Border Art Biennial”, Luleå, Sweden (2013); “Sin motivo aparente”, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain (2013); “Conversation Pieces”, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany (2013); The 30th Sao Paulo Bienal – “The Imminence of Poetics”, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); “Unfinished Journeys”, The National Museum of Norway, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (2012).

Among his recent solo shows are: “Against my Ruins“, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, Denmark (2014); “For Each Light a Shadow”, Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina and “The G in Modernity Stands for Ghosts Mellanrummet”, Nils Staerk, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013); “Even Heroes Grow Old Index”, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden and “U-Turn”, Arteba with Nils Stærk, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012); “OtherWhere”, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, Denmark, “Hay siempre un día mas lejos”, Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil, “Violent Corners”, ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano, Italy and “Trans Atlantic Art Statements”, Basel, Switzerland (2011); “The G in Modernity Stands For Ghosts”, Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra, Portugal, “Between an Imperial system and a Metric System Present Future”, Artissima, Torino, Italy, “Horizon (Southern Sun Drawing)”, Zona Maco, Mexico City, Mexico and “Las Casas is Not a Home Elastic”, Malmö, Sweden.