Exhibition at the Optical and Mechanical Plant features artworks:

WE (2017)

Nails, steel, 200 × 310 × 6 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Francesca Minini, Milan

The installation WE is a message of unity, encounter and hope. It invites us to reflect on the idea of community and a sense of belonging, which are inextricably linked to the central concept of the artwork. A close look at the piece reveals the underlying pain and violence hiding behind its message of togetherness. This message of unity is revealed through the specificity of the chosen material — a multitude of small nails, which form a compositional unity. The sharp and caustic nail becomes a weapon capable of dictating boundaries and defining them as insurmountable.

Violent Corners (2017/2021) 

Site specific installation, golden leaf applied on walls. Courtesy of the artist

In his artistic practice Lagomarsino revisits linguistic, historical and political geographical constructs that shape our knowledge. He manages to observe and investigate history and its mistakes, and today’s political and social structures, from multiple perspectives and definitions.

His site-specific installation intervenes in the space of the Optical and Mechanical Plant, covering all the sides of columns at their tops with golden foil. Following the surface and angles of the metal and concrete, Violent Corners accentuates the structure of the industrial building, metaphorically highlighting the different power dynamics involved in an institutional framework. At the same time the work emphasizes the continuity between different historical moments and the symbolic representations they construct. From colonial times to modernity, from Baroque curvaceousness to avant-garde geometry, and from icon painting to industry.

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Exhibition at Salute Cinema features artwork

AMERICAMNESIA (2017)

Ink applied on wall, two rubber stamps and black ink, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist; Nils Staerk, Copenhagen; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo

In AmericAmnesia the phrase “America Amnesia” has been stamped repetitively line after line covering an entire room, creating something between a pattern and a sign. By the simple poetic act of superimposing the last A in America with the first A in Amnesia and the last A in Amnesia with the first in America the work makes these two words inseparable and sets in motion questions regarding the forgotten history of America, the blind spots of historiography or what Walter Mignolo calls “the darker side of modernity”. By allowing the first letters to overlap, Lagomarsino both connects and dissolves them in one simple gesture. On the other hand the work can also be read as a critique to the common misconception of referring to America when we mean the United States.

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Runo Lagomarsino lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. Working with a range of materials, such as installations, sculpture, drawings, and actions Lagomarsino's work points towards the gaps and cracks in our explanation models and truth claims, highlighting language’s precarious foundation. Language, geography, historiography, and power are themes that he revisits in his artistic work, using materials that often evoke memories of our past, to ask us to reflect the conditions enabling these connections. Forms, which he then attacks, shifts, transcends, scrutinizes, and confronts. With precise and poetic displacements, he constructs frictions between language, iconography, and prevailing narratives.

Photo by Krzysztof Zielinski