ART CITIES:Stockholm-Runo Lagomarsino
Runo Lagomarsino works with installations, objects and films. His way of shining a light on the distribution of power, opens up new narratives about our own time. Several of his works investigate how the image of “the discovery of the New World” by Europe and the process of colonisation has become part of historiography. They also reflect on the ways in which that historical legacy has been dealt with and reproduced on a global scale in the modern era.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
Runo Lagomarsino awarded the 2019 Friends of Moderna Museet Sculpture Prize and the Museum dedicates an exhibition in his work. 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 WW I, 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. Memorialisation of memories that cannot be contained is present in “Air d’exil (we smoke for the dead, we store for the dead, but they are not dead)” (2019). Coloniality of power is a recurring condition in contemporary Latin American societies shaping the living legacy of colonialism in the form of social discrimination and political interventionism. Coming from a family forced to migrate to Argentina from Italy before the heat of colonial World War I and forced to leave Argentina with military dictatorship in 1976 to come to Sweden, Lagomarsino is very aware of the forms of fascism the colonial mind is produced by and continues to produce to sustain itself. Comprised of glass jars, burned and broken light bulbs collected from the apartments the artist and his family have lived in during the last four years in different countries and continents, “We live on the ruins of previous futures” (2015-19) brings the same institution of enlightenment into the domestic space addressing what connects institutional sublime and everyday mundane ideologically. In jarring already used, burned and broken light bulbs, Lagomarsino alludes to the process of demystification and remystification present in “Lampada Annuale” (1966) by one of his reference artists, Alighiero Boetti, where a single, outsized light bulb in a mirror-lined wooden box, randomly switches on for eleven seconds each year. “Blind spots” (2014) is one part of a series of works that revolve around the great temples of knowledge and education that were constructed in Europe in the form of museums during the colonial era. During a residence in Berlin, Runo Lagomarsino visited the Museumsinseldistrict where the major German collections of ancient art are grouped together. The suite of transparencies could be likened to a portrait of the Pergamon Musuem, created by the various light sources of the building. The lamps emerge as silent witnesses to the project of enlightenment and the archaeological discoveries that would be of such key importance to the self-image of Northern Europe. The broken lamps also serve as a crass image of the workaday life of the cultural institution. His work “There is always a day away” (2011) consists of a set of objects laid out in a row on a long shelf. This is the way valuable objects have been presented ever since the major museums were developed in the cities of nineteenth century Europe. Many of the objects derive from the circulatory systems of the consumer world in which value systems and the patterns of marketing have merged. In various ways the objects create associations with travelling and evoke a sense of how the notion of conquest and the belief in development have set their stamp on modern cultural and social life. 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.
Info: Curator: Fredrik Liew, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Duration: 12/11/19-22/3/20, Days & Hours: Tue & Fri 10:00-20:00, Wed-Thu 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.modernamuseet.se
