Andréhn-Schiptjenko
08-18 (Past Perfect)
Santiago Mostyn , United States
Santiago Mostyn “08-18 (Past Perfect)” at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris. © Alexandra de Cossette. Courtesy: the artist and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm/Paris
7 APRIL – 22 MAY, 2022
Santiago Mostyn’s films, installations, texts, and performances explore the dissonance of lives lived between different political spheres. Mostyn builds intuitive narratives through layering and collage, whether in video or installation, working fluidly with both new and archival imagery. His work simultaneously employs footage of historical events, political and cultural figures, and racial injustice to examine questions of memory and identity, both personal and collective.
In 08-18 (Past Perfect), Mostyn extends his thinking around the fragility and potential of the body in two distinct political spaces: late Capitalism in the United States, and post-colonial populism in southern Africa and the Caribbean. In his 2019 video triptych Altarpiece (exhibited at the Institut Suèdois in Paris in 2019 and at Andréhn-Schiptjenko Stockholm in 2021), Mostyn sourced material from online archives and combined these with his own recordings to explore how broad histories and personal memory might intersect in the gestures of Black bodies confined to these two spheres.
Building on the research behind Altarpiece, Mostyn has in 08-18 (Past Perfect) created pairings and triptychs of analogue photographs, made over the course of a decade of travel between sites of personal significance for the artist. In each pair or trio, photographs from the different locations are placed in contrast (Harare–Tobago, Carenage–Mutare, Miami–Port-of-Spain) to consider how individuals on either side of the Black Atlantic choose to pose or assemble, and how gestures carry over time or across generations. Mostyn installs these photographs in a non-chronological ‘timeline’, creating a rhythm as the viewer reads the photographs in a rolling flow, with the gaps in the installation as part of the rhythm.
Exploring the mechanics of photography, Mostyn has created a wallpaper for the gallery using a simple cyanotype process – rolls of paper prepared with light-sensitive emulsion that develops over the course of the exhibition, turning progressively deeper shades of blue.
Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Fransisco USA) is based in Sweden but maintains strong ties to Zimbabwe and Trinidad & Tobago, the countries of his upbringing. He received his BA in from Yale University and after attending Städelschule from 2006-2007, he received an MA in 2013 from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Santiago was a resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 2021, and will be a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 2022. Recent exhibitions include 8-18 (Past Perfect) at Gerðarsafn Art Museum, Reykjavik (2022); The Real Show at CAC Brétigny (2022); Swimming Pool-Troubled Waters at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2021); Deep Listening for Longing at the 2021 Borås Art Biennial, Sweden (2021), With New Eyes at Goteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg (2021), Your Shadow is a Mirror at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Sweden (2021), and Grass Widows at Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB, Canada (2020).
Rendez-Vous
Saturday 21 May 2022 at 1:00 pm
Talk between Cédric Fauq, Chief Curator at CAPC – Musée d’Art Contemporain Bordeaux and Santiago Mostyn on his solo exhibition “8-18 (Past Perfect)”
75003 Paris, France 01 81 69 45 67 www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com
The gallery
Since its inception in 1991 Andréhn-Schiptjenko has consistently been committed to working on an international arena and to the long-term representation of emerging and established contemporary artists from all over the world working with painting, sculpture, photography, film and digital media as well as installation-based and site-specific work.
With a profound interest in exhibition as form, the gallery has presented shows that have become seminal, successfully launching the careers of Scandinavian artists such as Cajsa von Zeipel, Gunnel Wåhlstrand, Annika von Hausswolff and Matts Leiderstam, and giving artists such as Uta Barth, Cecilia Bengolea, José León Cerrillo, Martín Soto Climent, Ridley Howard, Tony Matelli, and Xavier Veilhan their first European or Scandinavian one-person exhibition. In recent years the gallery has also exhibited work by deceased artists such as Francesca Woodman and Siri Derkert, successfully renewing critical and public interest in their work.
Having established itself as one of the leading galleries in Scandinavia, the gallery enjoys privileged relationships with museums and collectors and is also involved in projects in the public space. In 2019 the gallery moved to a new space in the center of Stockholm and as way of expanding the gallery’s international scope in a more permanent way also opened a second space in Paris, allowing for a closer relationship with the gallery’s international network.
Andréhn-Schiptjenko has for soon three decades participated in international art fairs – Art Basel, Independent New York and Brussels, CHART Copenhagen, Material Art Fair Mexico City and FIAC Paris. It is owned and directed by Ciléne Andréhn and Marina Schiptjenko, both with a long history of being active in the art world beyond the gallery, as selection committee-members of art fairs and board members of institutions and the Swedish National Gallery Association.
Gallery artists
Uta Barth • Tobias Bernstrup • José León Cerrillo • Jacob Dahlgren • Siri Derkert • Carin Ellberg • Elisabeth Frieberg • Mark Frygell • Siobhán Hapaska • Annika von Hausswolff • Ridley Howard • Martin Jacobson • Kristina Jansson • Lena Johansson • Brad Kahlhamer • Annika Larsson • Matts Leiderstam • Linder • Tony Matelli • Nandipha Mntambo • Santiago Mostyn • Julie Roberts • Yngvild Saeter • Martín Soto Climent • Per B Sundberg • Theresa Traore Dahlberg • Xavier Veilhan • Gunnel Wåhlstrand • Cajsa von Zeipel
