Runo Lagomarsino

Six tables display several postcards of national commercial airlines. The depicted airplanes are from different parts of the world and time periods. There are postcards from companies that for one reason or another have ceased to operate, including those from countries that don't exist anymore or have changed their name. On each of the postcards there is a line of pebbles placed side by side. As the original airplanes once did or still do and as the postcards were designed to do, the stones have also been travelling, in a conjunction of a metaphoric travelling and an actual one. The stones have been collected in different locations, during walks taken by the artist or by friends and colleagues who contributed to the collection, building a collective narrative of travel, displacement and people.
The artist has meticulously positioned the stones to cover the aircrafts' windows. All the windows are covered, not letting the passengers look out or the viewers look in. It is the stones that hold the airplane on the table, forcing each of them to stay, preventing them to fly. There is a visual paradox between the physicality of the stones and the postcards, and the nature of the aircrafts they represent. Planes belonging to nations, stones belonging to places, people in between placement and displacement, transcending notions of national belonging by the act of collecting stones everywhere.