Runo Lagomarsino: Silence Answers All, Marabouparken Konsthall

Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in Paris, following the terror bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Germany’s Luftwaffe in the context of the Spanish Civil War. The painting was first presented at the Spanish Republic Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition of Art and Technology in the same year. It was shown in the pavilion courtyard, together with Alexander Calder’s Mercury fountain.

An architectural replica of the Pavilion was constructed in 1992 in Barcelona. It now holds The Pavelló de la República Library, which is part of University of Barcelona. A reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica hangs in the pavilion´s open courtyard. With a simple gesture, Lagomarsino draws parallels between the site of his own exhibition and the pavilion’s role as a space of resistance and political expression.

The pavilion curator, Spanish writer José Bergamín, recollects how he visited Picasso’s studio while the artist was working on Guernica. Picasso handed Bergamín a single red paper tear and gave him the responsibility to, every Friday during the exhibition, place the tear on the painting, where he finds it best suited. The tear was never placed upon the painting as Bergamín was forced to exile. Lagomarsino traces this missing tear, its potential, as so many other red tears from 1937 onwards.

Continuing to think about the roles that Guernica has had and still can carry, in a newly produced video, the artist sweeps and mops the floor of the pavilion’s yard. In the rhythmic motions of cleaning, there is an acknowledgment of the deep scars that history has etched into the fabric of our collective memory. The act of cleaning the ground in front of this image can be seen as a preparation, as when the parishes dress their saints with the purple clothing of Easter, because the time has come again. If Guernica is denouncing the atrocity of war, the effort to cleanse, to wipe away the dirt and grime, highlights the impossibility of erasing the past, there are no stains that can be scrubbed away. The image haunt us and should haunt us.

Yet, it is not only the past that haunts us. In A Cloud of Smoke a lit candle hangs horizontally on the wall dripping onto the daily newspaper that is placed underneath it. The liquid wax solidifies, permanently altering the paper, overwriting the day’s reporting. Is it a way of obscuring the news because we can’t stand to see them any longer or, on the contrary, is it a way of saying that we need to look closer, to look elsewhere, to see what is behind the images?

Marabouparken konsthall