REVIEW
in Kunstkritikk.se
Read more here: https://kunstkritikk.se/allt-ar-omhet/

HACIENDO CONTEXTO II
Collaborative Laboratory of Contemporary Art in Lima
20 February – 15 March 2018

Opening: Thursday, 15 February, 7pm
Proyecto AMIL | Centro Comercial Camino Real | Lima
 
Proyecto AMIL is pleased to invite you to the exhibition HACIENDO CONTEXTO II. Organized by Martin Gustavsson and Rodrigo Gómez Olivos, this is a presentation of the results of the Collaborative Laboratory of Contemporary Art in Lima.
 
Developed with nine artists from Peru and Sweden, and taking as a starting point the cultural syncretism in the ‘Cuzco School of Painting’, the personal and collaborative proposals of the participants put forth a reflection on colonialism and cultural cross-dressing in Peru from the sixteenth century onwards.
 
Participating Artists:
Alejandro Montero Bravo (Stockholm)
Clara Best (Lima)
Ginés Frayssinet (Lima)
Jiefar Del Aguila (Trujillo)
Juan Oscar Guzman Svensson (Stockholm)
Julio Urbina Rey (Lima)
Manuel Limay Incil (Cajamarca)
Martin Gustavsson (London)
Pablo Fernández (Lima)
Rodrigo Gómez Olivos (Valparaíso)
Sandra Salazar (Lima)
  
This exhibition was made possible with the support of Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm.

September 2017 - April 2018
Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life

A touring exhibition curated by Michael Petry and Roberto Ekholm.
he Exhibition is based on Michael Petry's book Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life published by Thames & Hudson.

Travelling artists:
Peter Abrahams, Sue Arrowsmith, Annie Attridge, Aziz + Cucher, Conrad Bakker, Barnaby Barford, Berthold Bell, Per Christian Brown, Mat Collishaw, Marcus Cope, Michael Craig-Martin, John Dugdale, Roberto Ekholm, Saara Ekström, Nancy Fouts, Nick Fox, Anya Gallaccio, Ana Genovés, Ori Gersht, Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, Cynthia Greig, Martin Gustavsson, Jefferson Hayman, Paul Hazelton, Todd Hebert, Renata Hegyi, Bill Jacobson, Alexander James, Peter Jones, Edward Kay, Rob Kesseler, Alana Lake, Janne Malmros, Carol Marin-Pache,Livia Marin, Caroline McCarthy, Damien Meade, John Mitchell, Polly Morgan, Dermot O'Brien, Gabriel Orozco, Bruno Pacheco, Guillaume Paris, Michael Petry, Marc Quinn, Eric Rhein, Miho Sato, Rebecca Scott, Andro Semeiko, Jane Simpson, Jim Skull, Matt Smith, Rob Smith, Jennifer Steinkamp, Richard Stone, Yuken Teruya, Maciej Urbanek, Mathew Weir, James White, Kraig Wilson, Cindy Wright

Current:
Guildhall Art Gallery London
7 September 2017 - 2 April 2018
Guildhall Art Gallery

Curators:
Dr. Michael Petry
Roberto Ekholm
Katty Pearce (Guildhall)

Additional Artists:
Emma Bennett, Maurizio Bongiovanni, Kim Baker, Claudia Carr, Simon English, Helena Goldwater, James Hart Dyke, Kate Joyce, John Kaine, Sally Kindberg, Nils-Erik Mattsson, Aidan McNeill, Lisa Milroy, Carlos Noronha Feio, Michael Raedecker, Jane Telford, Cammie Toloui, Clare Twomey

More info, here.
Guardian review, here. / Sunday Times review, here./ Artlyst review, here.

May 2017
Interventions - Proyecto Amil

Located throughout derelict spaces within Centro Comercial Camino Real, Proyecto AMIL presents an ongoing and constantly evolving series titled Interventions.

These presentations of artist installations are set outside the white walls of the main gallery space. 

Distinct by their use of abandoned shop fronts on the underground level, these Interventions function within the framework of an imperfect space; each utilize the inherent architectural complexities and a visible urban biography held within a building in transition. These re purposed shops themselves become simultaneously exhibitions rooms and vitrines for examining the installations. Scattered amongst spaces still derelict, the individual Interventions stand within a larger framework of the series as a whole, as well as the architectural context.

Interventions are unveiled on a rotational basis, and showcase crucial works of contemporary artists situated both within Peru and abroad. 

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Martin Gustavsson’s (Sweden, 1964) practice shifts the conventional aesthetics of painting; reinventing methods of installation and interaction. His painting reflects on the impact of image making in relation to religion, homophobia and systems of oppression and liberation. The work forces through visual and societal restraint, and speculates on the codes and distortions of narrative.

As part of Interventions, two paintings are presented as an altar to sexual difference, questioning the stuck ideas of aesthetics and beauty. Each painting tells a story that is uniquely intimate and unashamedly sensual and homosexual. More information here.

February- April 2017
Nature Morte
Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition

Curators: Michael Petry, Roberto Ekholm, Małgorzata Santarek

The exhibition was organized as a cooperative project between the Four Domes Pavilion, a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław, and MOCA London & tries to find answers to the following questions: how the still-life motive evolved in art? What’s the attitude of contemporary artists towards this tradition and how it’s being interpreted by them?

Participating Artists: Mat Collishaw, Marc Quinn, Jennifer Steinkamp, Polly Morgan, Ori Gersht, Michael Craig-Martin, John Dugdale, Gabriel Orozco, Cindy Wright, Bill Jacobsen, CynthiaGreig, Aziz + Cucher, Jane Simpson, Peter Jones, Martin Gustavsson, AnaGenovés, Todd Herbert, Guillaume Paris, Bruno Pacheco, Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, MihoSato, Livia Marin, YukenTeruya, Barnaby Barford, James White, Alina Szapocznikow, Georg Nerlich, Jonasz Stern, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Jerzy Lewczyński, Jan Jaromir Aleksiun, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jadwiga Sawicka.

More information here.

January 2016
Tapestry Truths performed among the paintings El Mirage at Participant Inc

Stanley Love Performance Group, "Tapestry Truths"
Performances: January 13-17, 8pm

" 'Tapestry Truths' is a dance / performance piece based on the depths of joy, celebration, heartfelt humanity, and spirit. We are conveying a message of eclecticism in dance styles, music styles, body types, and spiritual practices. The dancers are totemic in their individual expressions of movement, but are also part of a group that is mostly moving in unison — a universal force of individuals. Most of the piece is composed of uplifting, fun, emotional, cosmic, funky, physical, and rhythmically based material. But we finish with a final mediation on the Earth: the truth that all over this planet, for thousands of years, the human race has had spiritual practices. These practices are different in style and focus, but possibly all originate from the same source and impulse. All are ancient and deserve to be respected by Earth’s children.”
—Stanley Love

These five evening performances are the culmination of Stanley Love Performance Group’s residency at PARTICIPANT INC, sharing space with an exhibition by Martin Gustavsson, "El Mirage." Gustavsson’s paintings reference and pick up a theatrical schema outlined by Jean Genet: resisting illusion and proposing a space of the indeterminate, making room for fantasy, pleasure, and play. Conceived as screens, Gustavsson’s paintings are affixed onto metal structures on wheels. Performing in and around these works, SLPG performers have utilized the exhibition as an open rehearsal space, a space of interaction, continually re-shaping itself. Working from social and modern dance idioms, the SLPG cast is built on an array of individuality, a large ensemble of diverse bodies. While highly structured and choreographed, the performance introduces movement that is widely dynamic and open to past and future agencies.

Founded in 1992, Stanley Love Performance Group has recently performed at the Lower East Side Girls Club (2015), The Whitney Museum of American Art (2015), MoMA PS1 (2013), PS122 (2013), and the Whitney Biennial (2012). Other venues include The Kitchen, Paula Cooper Gallery, The Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Cooper Union, NYU, Dixon Place, and the LGBTQ Center. Stanley Love graduated from the Juilliard School and creates works of eclecticism and expression to inspire humanity. Love Lives and works in New York.

Photo: Stanley Love Performance Group, "Tapestry Truths," 2015. A Performa 15 Consortium Project presented by PARTICIPANT INC. Photo by Paula Court, courtesy of Performa.

December 2015
Oceanic Feelings
Festival of Arts in North Norway

Festival exhibition 2015 "Oceanic Feelings" is the last installment of a trilogy examining the uniqueness of mankind. The title conjures up visions of endless expanse, and sheds light upon art´s symbolic capacity for revealing civilization´s ebb and flow. The festival exhibition 2015 contains work by art collective AES+F from Russia, Martin Gustavsson from Sweden plus Trygve Luktvasslimo and Kjell Varvin from Norway. The exhibition´s curator is Joakim Borda who has also been responsible for "Pioneer Voices" in 2013 and "Paradise Reclaimed" in 2014.

December 2015
Yesterday We Wanted To Be The Sky

Installation view from a group exhibition at Kamerade Gallery in Stockholm earlier this year. Hanging with a photo by Slava Magutin curated by C-print.

December 2015
El Mirage at Participant Inc.

From November 22, 2015 – January 17, 2016, PARTICIPANT INC is proud to present Martin Gustavsson, El Mirage, an exhibition of new paintings explicitly produced to be utilized by Stanley Love Performance Group, in residency for the duration of
the exhibition. There will be a special opening performance for Performa's 10th Anniversary, Performa 15, on the evening of November 22. The exhibition and residency will culminate in the premiere of a new performance work, Tapestry Truths, by Stanley Love Performance Group (SLPG) in January 2016. With El Mirage, Gustavsson upends the conventional aesthetics of a painting show with mobile works that compose an environment for intervention by others. The thinking around this project started five years ago as a conversation between Gustavsson and Ian White (1971-2013). White was a performance artist, curator, writer, long-time friend and collaborator. Together, Gustavsson and White discussed the potentialities of an exhibition that combined painting and performance. They spoke of Baroque music as rhythmic gesture, Jean Genet, Poussin; and about being, inhabiting, performing, or not performing an image. In discussions about revisiting such an exhibition at PARTICIPANT INC, Stanley Love was introduced as a collaborator. Genet plays a pivotal role in the overall work; specifically his 1961 play The Screens, to which Gustavsson makes direct reference through the deployment of painted movable screens. In Genet’s stage directions, the representations depicted on the screens are always in proximity to real objects, betraying the possibility of stable imagery and initiating novel scenes. As an artist who refused to play the game of representation, Genet, to quote Leo Bersani in his 1996 book Homos, “turns his back on The Theatre of Good.” Proposing a space of the indeterminate, El Mirage re-creates room for fantasy, pleasure, and play. This is where Love comes in.

Performing in and around Gustavsson’s screens — paintings affixed onto metal structures on wheels — Stanley Love Performance Group will utilize the exhibition as an open rehearsal space, a space of interaction, continually re-shaping itself. Working from social and modern dance idioms, the SLPG cast is built on an array of individuality, a large ensemble of diverse bodies. While highly structured and choreographed, the performance introduces movement that is wildly dynamic and open
to past and future agencies. This collaboration reflects upon the daily occurrence of action, pictured outside and within the set of paintings, not as spectacle, but as an investigation into physiology: what is a body, what is an image, how do the two correlate and mutate? The exhibition foregrounds the un-boundaried image, one that originates and exists beyond the canvas, and poses the question: When does a painting become a body? In making these works, Gustavsson looked to heroes, while engaging a personal narrative of his formative years in the 1990s — to be young and gay in New York and Europe in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Speaking to this directly, Gustavsson stated, “I learned about David Wojnarowicz from a distance, while at art school in London. His sense of urgency felt electrifying. Stanley transports us from this time. I am also looking at William Blake, his use of swirls and labyrinths, in an effort to access these spaces for myself. I surround myself with these largerthan- life figures, or, the image I have of them, and converse with them in this‘play’ that we are making.”

April 2013
INDENTATIONS

Private view: Thursday 18th April, 6.30-8.30pm
Exhibition dates: 19th April – 1st June 2013
Gallery opening times: Tue-Fri 11-6, Sat 11-3, or by appointment

Maria Stenfors is pleased to announce ‘Indentations’, a major new series of paintings by Martin Gustavsson. The core subject matter of the paintings reveal a physical rotation, through a fixed viewpoint, as if they were snapshots or the frames of a film reel. If a film is a large series of images shown in quick succession of one another, the paintings presented act equally as a short film of the sculpture, in all its dysfunction and disjointedness.

The majority of the paintings in the exhibition are inspired by a neoclassical sculpture in Gothenburg Museum of Art. Viewed from different angles, the sculpture has been captured in a rotation of perspectives. Presented and represented is an idealised body, a male nude and a still life. The artist’s use of bold colours and graphics lends heavily from the tools and techniques of visual communication. Gustavsson re-uses existing imagery, copying and creating likeness in difference. In a number of the paintings, representation has been altered by the addition of a physical object. This interference creates a sense of realness, enhancing and transferring the rotation and creating tension. This addition of an object breaks the conventional perception of the framing, allowing the painting to have physicality, a weight, an accentuated sense of presence. Art history is treated as a wealth of potential readymades, waiting to be recast and re-inscribed over time. With the painterly volume and flatness in the paintings, through the flatness comes indentation. Different works and times collides, one indentation in one painting starts a ripple effect, a subtle shift, across the neighboring works. Pressing the surface of one, it creates a representation of the footprint, or a change in the time line.