Runo Lagomarsino lives and works in Malmö, Sweden, and São Paulo, Brazil. An Offensive Object in the Least Offensive Way was a new commission for the 2012 Biennial, composed by three pieces. The starting point was an exchange between the artist and a neighbour in São Paulo who had a statue of a macaw decorating her front yard. This sculpture had been shipped across the Atlantic to ‘re-encounter’ a similar macaw depicted in a poster from the early 20th century advertising a voyage to Brazil, which the artist had found at the Liverpool’s Maritime Museum.
2012 Biennial Year Find out more
Blueprints extends the narrative, by masking the waterfront view from the Cunard building’s window with a paper stand-in for the sea, an ideal blue: calling to mind the necessary fictions within the contexts that the work inhabits.
By the simple gesture of amplifying the sound of a Dia projector, Heaven Falls reinforces the meaning of the objects represented in the slides: a collection of machetes from the American continent. An object that has been traveling in time assuming different socio-political and symbolic meanings. An offensive object in the least and most offensive ways.
Previous exhibitions include Unfinished Journeys (The National Museum of Norway, Oslo, 2012), Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011 (Istanbul, Turkey, 2011) and Speech Matters (54th Venice Biennale, Danish Pavilion, Venice, Italy, 2011).
An Offensive Object in the Least Offensive Way, 2012
Hand painted macaw in plaster, crate and Booth Line poster; Blueprints (sewed sheets of paper covering window)
Exhibited at The Cunard Building