DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents Concentrations 61: Runo Lagomarsino, EntreMundos, the first US solo museum exhibition for the conceptual artist. The exhibition, which is on view September 30, 2018, through April 14, 2019, explores the unstable nature of national identities and mythologies through the transformation of everyday objects and phrases into historically referential works of art. With these deceptively simple transformations, Lagomarsino points to the volatile relationship between power and geography.
Concentrations 61 spans two galleries and features new commissions and previous works specifically reconfigured for the DMA. The first gallery references colonialism and its reverberations throughout the Americas; the second has resonances for the current political turmoil in the United States and beyond. The subtitle of the exhibition, EntreMundos (between worlds in Spanish), evokes how Lagomarsinos work cannot be tethered to fixed identifying or spatial markers. Instead, his language is often abstract or universalizing, implicating us all in a constellation of the constant movement of people and things.
Lagomarsinos work exposes the power dynamics involved in who gets to claim themselves as native, as Western, or as American, and how these distinctions are ultimately arbitrary and in flux, says Anna Katherine Brodbeck, the DMAs Nancy and Tim Hanley Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and curator of the exhibition. Lagomarsino responds specifically to the legacy of European colonialism and his own family history of exile during Argentinas military dictatorship in the 1970s. But these old histories hold new lessons for the current political climate in the US, characterized by travel bans, border walls, battles over the rights of indigenous people and the protection of natural resources, and a grappling with confederate history in the wake of a resurgence of white supremacism.
Born in Lund, Sweden, in 1977 to Argentinian parents descended from Italian émigrés, Runo Lagomarsinos biography charts the very colonial histories that his work examines. Lagomarsino currently lives and works between Malmö, Sweden, and São Paulo, Brazil. 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 (200708). His work has been exhibited in group shows at the Guggenheim, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Prospect.4 New Orleans; and the Venice Biennale, among others. For more information about the artist, visit RunoLagomarsino.com.
The exhibition is part of the Museums Concentrations series of project-based solo exhibitions by international emerging artists. The series began in 1981 as part of the DMAs commitment to the work of living artists.
For nearly 40 years, the Concentrations program has proven successful in introducing emerging artists to local and international audiences alike. We believe Runo Lagomarsino is a fitting choice to continue this tradition with his focus on pressing issues of the day, said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMAs Eugene McDermott Director. As an institution, we are committed to expanding voices and representation, and advocating for artists early in their careers offers a unique opportunity to see and hear diverse perspectives.
Concentrations 61: Runo Lagomarsino, EntreMundos is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition is curated by Anna Katherine Brodbeck, The Nancy and Tim Hanley Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA