“Streams of Spleen”, the largest solo exhibition in Switzerland by Shahryar Nashat, curated by Francesca Benini, will be open at MASI Lugano until 18 August 2024. The artist has rethinked and transformed the enormous space of the underground hall of the MASI with an architectural intervention. That is, he built a smaller space inside it that highlighted his works. Above all he created an intimate atmosphere thanks to the pink walls, the lights and the background music so that one enters another dimension, where space and works are all one.
Veduta dell’allestimento “Shahryar Nashat. Streams of Spleen”, MASI Lugano, 2024 Foto © MASI Lugano, fotografo Luca Meneghel
This pink was already present in recent exhibitions in the institutions and galleries with which the artist works (Ordet, Milan; Rodeo, London; David Kordansky, Los Angeles; Gladstone gallery, New York, etc.), but here everything becomes so immersive that you move inside and outside this geometric cave as if enraptured by the multisensory environment. It is a journey into the human body that begins with the sculptures in synthetic polymer resin with oil paint that simulate human flesh and with vaguely corporeal forms entitled Bone Out while disturbing tufts of silicone, dust, hair and nails hang from the low ceiling (Untitled). By contrast, more geometric and abstract works in polyester resin, fiberglass and acrylic paint, such as Boyfriend, stand out in the middle of the space, but retain traces of bodily imperfection. On the right and on the left there are openings that take us into the larger and more relaxed space in which the artist proposes works using the most classic techniques: a marble, again with an organic shape (Hustler) and, on the wall, a small work, a small painting , in acrylic gel, ink on paper, plywood (Brother) representing a ribcage, and acrylic gelatin suggests organic secretions.
Veduta dell’allestimento “Shahryar Nashat. Streams of Spleen”, MASI Lugano, 2024 Foto © MASI Lugano, fotografo Luca Meneghel
Thus, behind the above construction, we arrive at the video projection, which communicates perfectly with the colors and sounds of everything else. The 7 minute 15 second LED wall HD video Streams of Spleen (2024) is looped onto a large wall of light screens. Here the artist wanted to put together different techniques of representing wolves filmed in their natural habitat, drawn digitally or recreated with artificial intelligence. So not only the human body, but also the animal body explored for its properties. We therefore range from mental perceptions to the processes of the food industry, from a cold and detached approach to a more empathetic one, to a synaesthetic experience, from a feeling of discomfort to being transported and fascinated, from muscular tissue to skeletal tissue, from vulnerability of the limbs to the strength and consistency of the marble, from a sensation of vitality to a sense of death, there is the history of art and the most up-to-date experimentation.
Veduta dell’allestimento “Shahryar Nashat. Streams of Spleen”, MASI Lugano, 2024 Foto © MASI Lugano, fotografo Luca Meneghel
The catalog, 17 Waves, that accompanies the exhibition is also an artistic operation: conceived by Shahryar Nashat in collaboration with the graphic designer Sabo Day and the writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen, it can be read as a poetic discourse on human existence and on being an artist. Seventeen chapters just as many possibilities and ways to create works, to be in the world. The book ends with a critical text by Francesca Benini and Gioia Dal Molin and is co-produced by MASI Lugano, Istituto Svizzero, Roma and Lenz Press. The exhibition is created in collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Rome.
Info:
Shahryar Nashat. Streams of Spleen
17.03.2024 – 18.08.2024
Sede LAC
Piazza Bernardino Luini 6, Lugano
https://www.luganolac.ch/masi/home.html
Emanuele Magri teaches History of Art in Milan. Since 2007 he has been writing abroad for Juliet art Magazine. Since the 1970s he has dealt with writing and visual arts. He created taxonomically defined worlds, in which he experimented with the self-referentiality of language, such as “La Setta delle S’arte” in which ritual clothes are made starting from words with multiple meanings, the “Treaty of genetic art” in which a series of plants is obtained from grafts of human organs, eyes, hands, mouths, etc., and the project “Fandonia”, a city where everything is double and hybrid.
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