RUNA ISLAM
LOST CINEMA LOST
TOBIAS PUTRIH
27th January – 30th March 2008
Palazzo Santa Margherita, c.so Canalgrande 103, Modena

Tobias Putrih, Venetian Atmospheric, 2007 veduta dell'installazione (dettaglio) photograph by Michele Lamanna, courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Galery, New York

Runa Islam, Time Lines, 2005, still da film, © the artist courtesy White Cube, London

The Galleria Civica di Modena is proud to present another first: a double solo exhibition housed simultaneously in the rooms of Palazzo Santa Margherita.
The exhibition will open in fact on 27th January at 12pm, at Palazzo Santa Margherita in corso Canalgrande 103, Modena, under the title Runa Islam LOST CINEMA LOST Tobias Putrih, organised and produced by Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, curated by Milovan Farronato.

Runa Islam and Tobias Putrih here display a new series of works especially designed for this occasion. A single space, two solo exhibitions face to face, one the contents and one the container of the other. The two artists have thus set out on an unprecedented collaboration project aimed at offering two separate projects, yet ones which feed off an ongoing dialogue and a well-balanced co-habitation.

After presenting Be The First To See What You See As You See It at the Venice Biennale (2005), How Far To Fårö at the Mart in Trento and Rovereto (2006), and First Day of Spring at Viafarini (Milan, 2006) – and before taking part in the upcoming edition of Manifesta (Bolzano-Trento, 2008), Runa Islam returns to Italy with three unseen works created in 2006/2007 and put on show in Modena for the first time. New Zealand, Stockholm, Venice are just a few of the settings used for the new films each of which develops themes dear to the English artist of Bangladeshi origins. Cinema seen as a kind of Magic Lantern, a space of illusion and projection, yet also one in which to tell the stories and show the lives of those pushed to the fringes of society. The film shot in Venice, Merchants of Venice, and produced by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, in fact follows the vicissitudes of the unauthorised peddlers who fill the most touristy areas of the lagoon town through shots of the goods that they sell. It is as if the goods defined not only the merchants but also their very existential condition.
The sense conveyed by the exhibition is completed with the presence of a number of previous works, both film works and sculptures, never seen before now in Italy.

Tobias Putrih, recently called upon to represent Slovenia at the 52nd Venice Biennale, uses this venue to present two film theatres and a luminous installation. Art, architecture and the human dimension are still the key elements which characterise his work. Cinema theatres continue to interest him in terms of providing the physical space for personal annihilation in the search for satisfaction. His are real, usable, working spaces, yet ones which on the outside also offer a series of impressive sculptures, created largely with the use of poor materials (plywood, tubing, cardboard). Each environment that he creates refers to a particular structure or architectural project, drawing heavily on the ‘20s, an era in which – before the Wall Street crash – movie theatres were the opulent arenas of oblivious entertainment, in which one was invited to seek evasion, forgetting one’s being only a tiny part of a system, of a marketing strategy, one’s being just another "commodity". Coming from an Eastern Europe scarred by the collapse of the Socialist utopia, Putrih finds a valid counterpart in the failure of the modernist utopia (which is also represented by the film industry) through which to recount his own personal experience to a wider audience.

Lost Cinema Lost (the common title of the exhibitions), for Islam means the cinema of lost origins, that which through its elementary magic, managed to come up with new and unreal images simply through the overlapping of two stills. For Putrih on the other hand, lost cinema is one of a series of spaces (along with department stores, amusement parks and other non-spaces) which marked the collapse and failure of both an individual and a collective utopia.

Like two voices in countermelody, two different artistic souls here interpret the theme of cinema, approaching it on two very different levels: one through moving images, the other through movie-theatre architecture, with a visual playoff which keeps the spectator switching between the screen and the scenery, and often calling on an interpretation of both together.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a single catalogue with critical texts by the curator, by the Head of the Galleria Civica di Modena, Angela Vettese, as well as by foreign critics invited to investigate various aspects of the works of both artists in terms of their work in general. The catalogue will also include the artists’ special projects as well as the reproduction of images of the works on show in the exhibition.

Biographical Notes

Runa Islam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1970. She attended Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. She lives and works in London. Among her numerous solo exhibitions: Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg (2005) Sweden; Santa Monica Contemporary Arts Centre, Barcelona (2005); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2005); Camden Arts Centre, London (2006), Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2007). She has also taken part in a great number of biennial shows, such as that of Istambul (2003), Venice (2005), Seville (2006) and Gwangju (2006).

Tobias Putrih was born in Krany, Slovenia, in 1972. He lives and works in New York.
After training initially in the sciences, he studied visual arts at the Academy of Lubiana and at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. His solo exhibitions include that at the Museum of Modern Art of Lubiana (2003), his one-man show at the Grazen Kunstverein, Graz (Austria, 2005), and Quasi-Random at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, New York (2007). He has taken part in a great number of international exhibitions, including the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) and Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt 2002).

Home