Runo Lagomarsino: The Square between the Walls, Lunds Konsthall

‘The Square Between the Walls’, Lagomarsino’s solo exhibition at Lunds konsthall, brings together a group of recent and older works with two new commissions dwelling on his own family’s history and his relationship with Lund. The artist‘s family fled the military regime in Argentina and settled in Lund in the late 1970s. His father found employment with Åkerlund & Rausing (now A&R Carton), where the presses worked around the clock to print cardboard for different sorts of packaging. Two new commissions, "Mad Toy and Home Waits for No One" (both 2021), are inspired by the Lagomarsino’s memories of visits to this factory with his father.

Visitors to the exhibition also have the unique opportunity to see one of the artist’s earliest works, "A Song of Bola de Nieve" (1997), a humorous piece in which he sings and simultaneously translates a song from Spanish into Swedish. It is shown together with a number of other recently produced works. His practice relies on the subversive and utterly precise use of language and symbols, and especially their implications for institutions, which is meant to empower viewers and encourage them to reflect on possible, probable and desirable futures.

As part of his exhibition, Lagomarsino has invited Malmö-based Bélgica Castro Fuentes to show a selection of her "arpilleras", narrative textile images sustaining a legacy of commentary and resistance through patchwork and embroidery that goes back to the self-organised women’s resistance groups during the military dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s and ’80s.

The catalogue contains two specially commissioned texts: an essay by Chilean art writer and curator María Berríos, putting Lagomarsino’s (and Castro Fuentes’s) work into a broader historical and cultural context of exile, and "Retrovisor (Rearview)" by Argentine writer Alan Pauls. The latter is a literary reflection on Lagomarsino’s two newest works and their relationship to "El juguete rabioso" (‘The Mad Toy’), a novel that another Argentine writer, Roberto Arlt, published in 1926.

As a complement to the exhibition the artist will use an existing billboard in Lund to produce a new temporary public art work related to the theme of the show. The exact location of the work and the date when it will be installed will be announced shortly. In addition to this, he will be hosting a guided tour of Lund on Sunday 1 August at 14.00. Please check Lunds konsthall webpage for details about the event and how to register for it.

Runo Lagomarsino’s work has been extensively shown in Sweden and internationally amongst other places at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Malmö Konstmuseum; Malmö Konsthall; LACMA, Los Angeles; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, New York; M HKA, Antwerp and Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, as well as in the Venice and São Paulo biennials.

We thank the artist and all the other collaboration partners for this exhibition, including the lenders – Francesca Minini, Milan; Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm; Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo – and, especially, AR Packaging Systems AB and Lund Water Front Packaging District in Lund, who helped produce the two newly commissioned works in the exhibition.

Curator: Debora Voges

Photographer: Daniel Zachrisson

Lunds konsthall